Internationalization
====================

*Internationalization* (often abbreviated *i18n* since there are 18
characters between the first "i" and the last "n" in that word) allows
Evennia's core server to return texts in other languages than English -
without anyone having to go in and add it manually. Take a look at the
``locale`` directory of the Evennia installation, there you will find
which languages are currently supported.

Note, what is translated in this way are hard-coded strings from the
server, things like "Connection closed" or "Server restarted" - things
that Players will see and which game devs are not supposed to change on
their own. So stuff seen in the log file or on stdout will not be
translated. It also means that the default command set is *not*
translated. The reason for this is that commands are *intended* to be
modified by users. Adding *i18n* code to commands tend to add complexity
to code that will be changed anyway. One of the goals of Evennia is to
keep the user-changeable code as clean and easy-to-read as possible.

Changing server language
------------------------

Change language by adding the following to your ``game/settings.py``
file:

::

    USE_I18N = True
    LANGUAGE_CODE = 'en'

Here ``'en'`` should be changed to the abbreviation for one of the
supported languages found in ``locale/``. Restart the server to activate
i18n.

Translating Evennia
-------------------

If you cannot find your language in ``locale/`` it's because noone has
translated it yet. Alternatively you might have the language but find
the translation bad ... You are welcome to help improve the situation!

To start a new translation, place yourself in Evennia's root directory
and run

::

     django-admin makemessages -l <language-code>

where ``<language-code>`` is the two-letter locale code for the language
you want, like 'sv' for Swedish or 'es' for Spanish.

Next head to ``locale/<language-code>/LC_MESSAGES`` and edit the
``*.po`` file you find there. There is no need to edit this file using a
normal text editor -- best is to use a po-file editor from the web
(search the web for "po editor" for many free alternatives).

The concept of translating is simple, it's just a matter of taking the
english strings you find in the ``*.po`` file and add your language's
translation best you can. The ``*.po`` format (and many supporting
editors) allow you to mark translations as "fuzzy". This tells the
system (and future translators) that you are unsure about the
translation, or that you couldn't find a translation that exactly
matched the intention of the original text.

Finally, you need to compile your translation into a more efficient
form.

::

    django-admin compilemessages

This will go through all languages and create/update compiled files
(``*.mo``) for them. This needs to be done whenever a ``*.po`` file is
updated.

When you are done, send the ``*.po`` and ``*.mo`` file to the Evennia
developer list (or push it into your own repository clone) so we can
integrate your translation into Evennia!