See online wiki for latest version.
Wrap translatable strings with _() e.g. _('string to translate') and the i18n-scan.pl and friends will correctly identify these strings for translation.
If you have multi line strings you can split them with concatenation:
var mystr = _('this string will translate ' +
'correctly even though it is ' +
'a multi line string!');
You may also use line continuations \ syntax:
var mystr = _('this string will translate \
correctly even though it is \
a multi line string');
Usually if you have multiple sentences you may need to use a line break. Use the <br /> HTML tag like so:
var mystr = _('Port number.') + '<br />' +
_('E.g. 80 for HTTP');
Use <br /> and not <br> or <br/>.
If you have a link inside a translation, move its attributes out of a translation key:
var mystr = _('For further information <a %s>check the wiki</a>')
.format('href="https://openwrt.org/docs/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer"')
This will generate a full link with HTML For further information <a href="https://openwrt.org/docs/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">check the wiki</a>. The noreferrer is important so that it is opened in a new tab (target="_blank").
Use the <%: text to translate %> as documented on Templates
As hinted at in the Templates doc, the %: invokes a translate() function.
In most controller contexts, this is already available for you, but if necessary, is available for include in luci.i18n.translate
Translations are saved in the folder po/ within each individual LuCI component directory, e.g. applications/luci-app-acl/po/.
The template is in po/templates/<package>.pot.
The individual language translation files can be found at po/[lang]/[package].po.
In order to use the commands below you need to have the gettext utilities (msgcat, msgfmt, msgmerge) installed on your system.
On Debian/Ubuntu, install them with sudo apt install gettext.
When you add or update an app, run from your applications/luci-app-acl/ app folder:
../../build/i18n-add-language.sh
This creates the skeleton .po files for all available languages open for translation for your app.
Or from the luci repo root:
./build/i18n-add-language.sh
This creates the skeleton .po files for all existing languages open for translation for all sub-folders.
After you make changes to a package, run:
./build/i18n-sync.sh applications/[application]
Example:
./build/i18n-sync.sh applications/luci-app-acl
This only updates those language .po files that already exist in applications/luci-app-acl/po/. See the previous step to add a new language.
Note: the directory argument can be omitted to update all po template and po files.
Some packages share translation files, in this case you need to scan through all their folders:
./build/i18n-scan.pl applications/[package-1] applications/[package-2] applications/[package-n] > [location of shared template]/[application].pot
This is what the mkbasepot.sh script does for the luci-base module:
./build/i18n-scan.pl \
modules/luci-base modules/luci-compat modules/luci-lua-runtime \
modules/luci-mod-network modules/luci-mod-status modules/luci-mod-system \
protocols themes \
> modules/luci-base/po/templates/base.pot
Note: The translation catalog for the base system covers multiple components. Use the following commands to update it:
./build/mkbasepot.sh
./build/i18n-update.pl
The *.po files are big so Luci needs them in a compact compiled LMO format.
Luci reads *.lmo translations from the /usr/lib/lua/luci/i18n/ folder.
E.g. luci-app-acl has an Arabic translation in luci-i18n-acl-ar package that installs /usr/lib/lua/luci/i18n/acl.ar.lmo file.
In order to quickly convert a single .po file to .lmo file for testing on the target system use the po2lmo utility.
You will need to compile it from the luci-base module:
$ cd modules/luci-base/src/
$ make po2lmo
$ ./po2lmo
Usage: ./po2lmo input.po output.lmo
Now you can compile and upload the translation:
./po2lmo ../../../applications/luci-app-acl/po/ar/acl.po ./acl.ar.lmo
scp ./acl.ar.lmo root@192.168.1.1:/usr/lib/lua/luci/i18n/
You can change languages in System /Language and Style and check the translation.