Today we are requesting your help with translating wfview’s user interface strings to various languages. You do not need to be a developer to do this, you just need language fluency and knowledge of typical ham radio jargon.
The easiest way to contribute a translation is as follows:
Check our repository to see if we have a translation template for your desired language. If we don’t have one, email me and I will generate it. You can look here for a file with a name such as wfview_LL.ts, where “LL” is the two-character language code for your language of interest. If you see such a file, click the ts file and see if it is generally complete or not. These files are plain text, you can scroll through them and see what’s here so far. Here is a link of exactly where to look: translations · translations · Elliott Liggett / wfview · GitLab
Download the repository as a zip file, and decompress the files. You can download the repo by going here: translations · translations · Elliott Liggett / wfview · GitLab and then going to where it has a blue menu that says “Code” (right hand side) and then going down to “zip”. More advanced users can clone the repo using git commands and then switch to the “translations” branch. Make sure you’re on the translations branch, which contains the “translations” folder. If you don’t see that folder within the source code, you’ve got the wrong branch!
Download and install the free Qt Linguist application. For windows, you can find a stand-alone installer here: Index of /linguist_releases
Linux and mac users can use their package managers to install it (google it for your specific system if you are unsure).
Open Qt Linguist and then chose File, Open, and navigate to and select the language template for your language of choice. For example, I would open translations/wfview_it.ts to translate wfview into Italian.
In the interface of Qt Linguist, there are categories (“context”) on the left side which correspond to different windows and sections of wfview. The first category selected by default is “FirstTimeSetup” which is our new splash screen for new users of wfview. To the right of the categories is a list of program strings.
Select a string. The panel below contains an area to type the translation. You might need to resize the panel to see it. The top of this panel says “Source Text” and then the input box below will say “Translation to”. Type in the translated text here, and then, press Control-Enter. If you do not press Control-Enter, that is ok, simply press the green check mark on the top control bar to mark the text as complete. Otherwise the translation won’t get used. Each string that you translate needs a green check mark next to it.
Guidelines:
Don’t bother translating short and common technical terms like “PTT” or “VFO”. These are well-known throughout the ham radio world and it is probably best to leave them as they are.
Make sure your translated text is roughly as long as the initial English text. A little longer or shorter is fine, just be aware if it’s overly long or short that it could impact the user interface. Enter in a translation comment if you are unsure.
Once you are done, email me the translation file and I will integrate it into the repository. Also let me know how I may credit your work (name, callsign, or whatever you prefer). Your translation will show up in Version 2 of wfview and possibly in some nightly builds once we switch the build system over.
There is also a README file for more advanced users, but honestly since it is really only one file that you will be modifying, there isn’t a need to follow the advanced procedure.
Thank you all for supporting Ham Radio, the original Open Source hobby.
1.Is it necessary to enter “Translation to” when no translation is required?
2.I thought it would be better to see the results on the screen, so I built the branch “translations” on WSL2, but ‘Current translation language: “”’
is displayed and you cannot see the translated screen. Please let me know how to deal with this if possible.
You can skip anything not needing translation; qt will just put in the English words if there isn’t a translation text available. So indeed, just skip those.
In my experience, I needed to export two variables to change the language. You should note their value before changing, just in case you need to change back.
export LANG=jp
export LANGUAGE=jp
And then it will load. Glad you spotted the language debug text.
Keep in mind that you must rebuild the translation “qm” files from the ts files. This is done with the ‘lrelease’ command or within Qt Creator Tools → External → Linguist → Release Translations
I wrote a script to alter the language variables back and forth, as it seems to come up a lot when working on these things.
Current translation language: “”
Recognized requested language and loaded the translations (or at least found the /translations resource folder). Installing translator.
Changed to translation language: “ja”
is displayed at startup, and the Japanese display is now possible.
Now you can enjoy your work.
Reference information.
export LANGUAGE=jp
In this case, the error display of wsjtx and terminal will not be in Japanese.
To display in Japanese
export LANGUAGE=ja
must be.
I just want to say, the response here has been fantastic!
OK2HAM, JG3HLX, and TA1YEP have submitted translation text which is going to be a part of version 2.
It’s so exciting to receive these contributions and we are really thankful. I made a few updates to the source code for things like dialog box text, and we will try and add translation flags for text that is within the source code as we add and refine features.
We will also be working on test builds for windows users, which I hope to have somewhat-functional by next week.
