Gettext PO/POT

Extension	.po / .pot
Smartling Identifier	gettext
Example File	gettext.pot
Resources	GNU Gettext Documentation

 

Source Strings in Gettext files

Smartling ingests the field in msgid as the source string and returns the translation in msgstr.

For example, in a source file:

msgid “Hello world”
msgstr “”

"Hello world" is ingested as the source string.

Keys-Variants

Smartling can capture the msgctxt parameter as variant metadata for a string. For example:

Text

msgctxt "Home Page Menu Navigation"
msgid "Home"
msgstr ""
msgctxt "Home Address Label"
msgid "Home"
msgstr ""

Will result in two strings for translation, both with the value “Home”. The translators can choose to to make the translation the same or not. The value of msgctxt displays to translators in the Translation Interface and the Smartling Dashboard. See the Help Center for more on translation variants.

String Instructions

Smartling includes comments in gettext files as instructions for translators. Comments follow the gettext standard. Only Extracted comments (beginning with #. ) are displayed to translators as instructions:

Text

#. This is an instruction that is included in the file above a string.
#. This is also an instruction that will be presented to translators.
#: arch/linux/directory_reader.py:101
msgid “Original source string.”
msgstr “”

HTML

Smartling automatically formats Gettext strings with HTML. No integration is required. HTML parsing can be turned on in order to create smaller source strings. Adding the smartling.string_format directive with the value html turns on HTML parsing. If this directive is present in the file Smartling explicitly parses all subsequent strings as HTML. With HTML parsing on, strings will be created based on HTML block elements. Strings that have no HTML are captured as normal. This directive is optional.

Plurals

If you include a plural-forms header in a original uploaded file, Smartling will return the locale specific plural-forms header in the translated file.

For example if an English source file contains the following header:

Text

"Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=n == 1 ? 0 : 1;\n"

A Russian translation file will contain:

Text

"Plural-Forms: nplurals=3; plural=n%10==1 && n%100!=11 ? 0 : n%10>=2 && n%10<=4 && (n%100<10 || n%100>=20) ? 1 : 2;\n"

Smartling supports the CLDR standards for plurals. For some languages, Gettext plural support differs from the CLDR standards. For example, CLDR allows four plural forms for Polish: one; few; many and other, while Gettext only supports one; few; and many. Smartling will allow translations for all four CLDR plural forms, but when downloading translated Gettext files, only those supported by Gettext will be included.

Return Untranslated Strings as Empty

When using file/get to download Gettext files from Smartling, the parameter includeOriginalStrings=false ensures that if no translations are available, Smartling returns an empty string. If the parameter is set to true, Smartling returns the original string.

Standard Placeholder Format

See Placeholders in Resource Files for more on placeholders.

Native Gettext Placeholder Formats

In addition to Smartling’s Placeholder Format directives, Smartling supports Gettext’s native method of declaring placeholder format using flags (comment lines beginning with #,). Flags affect only the entry they are part of. The following native Gettext placeholder types are supported:

• #, c-format
• #, java-format
• #, ios-format
• #, python-format
• #, sh-format

Directives

Format

# smartling.[directive_name] = [value]

 

entity_escaping

Exact delivery depends on file type.

Values	auto (default) true (or yes) false (or no)
Description	Can control whether or not characters will be "escaped" into entities when delivering translations. This can be set universally for the whole file via API, or by setting the directive at the top/start of the file. The directive can also be placed inline to control the behavior of specific strings.
Examples	To use inline: <!-- smartling.entity_escaping = false --> String: <!-- smartling.entity_escaping = auto -->

For example, your translation might look like this:
Smartling HTML escaping < > & " example string4

By default, using the "auto" setting, we would assume this is HTML from the <hr> tag and it would be converted to:
Smartling HTML escaping < > & " example string4

Using smartling.entity_escaping = false would allow Smartling HTML escaping < > & " example string4 to appear as it should.

placeholder_format

Values	NONE; C; IOS; PYTHON; JAVA; YAML; QT, RESX
Description	Used to specify a standard placeholder format.
Examples	# smartling.placeholder_format = IOS Specifies iOS-style placeholders for the file.

 

placeholder_format_custom

Values	1) Custom Perl compatible regular expression. 2) NONE - disables any current custom placeholders
Description	Specifies a custom placeholder format. Any text in your file matching the regular expression you provide will be captured as a placeholder.
Examples	# smartling.placeholder_format_custom = [.+?] Any characters surrounded by square brackets will be treated as a placeholder.

 

pseudo_inflation

Values	integer - Accepted values are 0 - 100
Description	Sets the percentage by which original strings are inflated when downloading pseudo translations. If this directive is not set, pseudo translations are 30 percent longer than the original strings.’
Examples	# smartling.pseudo_inflation = 80 Downloaded pseudo translations will increase the length of original strings by 80 percent.

  

sltrans

Values	translate OR notranslate
Description	Use this directive to enable or disable processing of translation strings in the file. You must turn translation back on after the strings you want to exclude.
Examples	# smartling.sltrans = notranslate Strings below this directive will be captured as strings but excluded from translation. # smartling.sltrans = translate Strings below this directive will be translated.