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## ⁠4.4. Translating Metadata

### ⁠4.4.1. Introduction

Most AppStream metadata can be translated, This page contains some practical instructions how to translate the metadata.

For KDE developers

If you are a KDE developer and using the KDE infrastructure with it's localization support, you need to do nothing to get translated metadata. Just place your `*.metainfo.xml*` (or `*.appdata.xml*` file) at a sane place, and the l10n-script will translate the file in-place automatically.

### ⁠4.4.2. Translating using Intltool

If you ship an `.xml.in` file rather than an `.xml` file, you can use Intltool to translate the data.
Each translatable element in the `.xml.in` file needs to be prefixed with an underscore (`_`) to be marked as translatable. This should include the `name`, `summary`, and `caption` tags, as well as each paragraph in the `description`. Apart from that, the same specifications apply to this file as for any other AppStream metadata.
To translate the appstream data, first add the `.xml.in` file to `po/POTFILES.in`, along with any other translatable files. Then create the translation template file `<package name>.pot`.

    ​cd po; intltool-update --pot --gettext-package=<package name>

For each supported language, copy the template file to `po/<language>-[<COUNTRY>].po`, where `po/<language>` and the optional `po/<COUNTRY>` are standard two-letter codes. Edit the file to add translated strings.
As the translatable content is updated, recreate the template file, and update the `.po` files.

    ​cd po; intltool-update --dist --gettext-package=<package name> <language>

Create the translated `.xml` with the following command.

    ​intltool-merge -u -c ./po/.intltool-merge-cache ./po -x <file>.xml.in <file>.xml

#### ⁠4.4.2.1. Integrating with Autotools (the AppStream way)

The generic way to add translation to your AppStream metadata in case you use Autotools is by using the following code snippet:

    ​appstreamdir = $(datadir)/metainfo/
    ​appstream_in_files = gedit.metainfo.xml.in
    ​appstream_DATA = $(appstream_in_files:.xml.in=.xml)
    ​@INTLTOOL_XML_RULE@
    ​EXTRA_DIST = $(metainfo_in_files)
    ​CLEANFILES = $(appstream_DATA)

The code assumes you are using the Intltool Automake code.

#### ⁠4.4.2.2. Integrating with Autotools (the AppStream-GLib way)

In case you want to use the macro provided by the AppStream-GLib library, you can use this code snippet:

    ​@APPSTREAM_XML_RULES@
    ​appstream_in_files = gedit.metainfo.xml.in
    ​appstream_XML = $(appstream_in_files:.xml.in=.xml)
    ​@INTLTOOL_XML_RULE@
    ​EXTRA_DIST = $(metainfo_in_files)
    ​CLEANFILES = $(appstream_XML)

Make sure you have the additional AppStream macro installed.

### ⁠4.4.3. Translating using Itstool

You can also use Itstool for translation. In order to translate an XML file with it, you need an `.its` file with translation definitions. An appropriate file for AppStream upstream metadata of any kind can be found here:

    ​
    ​<its:rules
    ​  xmlns:its="http://www.w3.org/2005/11/its"
    ​  version="1.0">
    ​  <its:translateRule translate="no" selector="/component"/>
    ​  <its:translateRule translate="yes"
    ​    selector="/component/name | /component/summary |
    ​    /component/description | /component/screenshots/screenshot/caption | /component/developer_name"/>
    ​</its:rules>

Save this file as `as-metainfo.its` for example.
To extract a GNU Gettext `.pot` file from your XML file, run itstool with the follwing arguments (replacing "foo" with your project name):

    ​itstool -i as-metainfo.its -o $podir/foo_metadata.pot data/foo.metainfo.xml

You can then translate the `.pot` file using the standard methods for translating files like these. You obtain `.po` files, which you can convert into `.mo` files (using msgfmt) like you would do with any other localization. Then, you need to call `itstool` again, to create a translated version of the original XML file:

    ​itstool -i as-metainfo.its -j data/foo.metainfo.xml -o output/foo.metainfo.xml $modir/*.mo

Please ensure that the `.mo` files in `$modir` are named with their language codes.

Note

You can find more information about Itstool on their homepage.

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