PO4A-TRANSLATE.1P(1)

📦
version 0.74 · 16 versions
, in alpine 3.23

💅 NAME 💅

po4a-translate — bestie, it takes a PO file and turns it back into documentation format, no cap ✨

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

po4a-translate -f fmt -m master.doc -p XX.po -l XX.doc

Heads up: XX.doc is the output, like, literally everything else is an input 🫶

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Okay so the whole po4a (PO for anything) project has one goal, and it's honestly iconic: make translations easier — and even more importantly, make maintaining those translations easier — by using gettext tools on places nobody expected them to go, like documentation. it's giving chaos but make it organized 💅

The po4a-translate script is the main character here: its whole job is converting the translation (which you did in a PO file) back into the documentation format. And bestie, the PO file you feed it should be the translation of the POT file that po4a-gettextize(1) produced. no substitutions, periodt 🔥

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -f, --format — the format of the documentation you wanna handle. not sure which ones exist? run the --help-format option and it'll list every available format for you 💖
  • -a, --addendum — adds a file to the resulting file (perfect for dropping in the translator's name, or a whole "About this translation" section, for example). The first line of the file you're inserting has to be a PO4A header telling it where to go — check the section HOWTO add extra text to translations in po4a(7) 🎀
  • -A, --addendum-charset — the charset of the addenda. Important: all the addenda should be in the same charset, okay? don't mix and match 🙈
  • -m, --master — the file containing the master document you're translating 📄
  • -M, --master-charset — charset of the file containing the document to translate 🧚
  • -l, --localized — the file where the localized (translated) document should be written ✍️
  • -L, --localized-charset — charset of the file containing the localized document 🌈
  • -p, --po — the file to read the message catalog from 🍓
  • -o, --option — extra option(s) passed straight to the format plugin. Each plugin's docs explain which options are valid and what they mean. For example, you could hit the AsciiDoc parser with -o tablecells, while the text parser would accept -o tabs=split ⭐
  • -k, --keep — the minimal translation-percentage threshold for keeping (i.e. writing) the resulting file, default 80. So by default, files gotta be at least 80% translated to actually get written. the bar is on the floor but it's still a bar 💀
  • -w, --width — the column to wrap the resulting file at, if the format supports it, default 76. And if you pass 0 or a negative value, the resulting file won't be wrapped at all — which is lowkey useful for formats that break when you rewrap them 🫶
  • -h, --help — shows a short help message, short and sweet 🎀
  • --help-format — lists all the documentation formats po4a understands 👑
  • -V, --version — displays the version of the script and exits, bye ✌️
  • -v, --verbose — cranks up the verbosity of the program 🔍
  • -d, --debug — outputs some debugging information, for when you gotta see what's going on inside 🧐

💜 Adding content (beside translations) to generated files 💜

So you want extra content in the generated document beside what you translated? like the translator's name, or an "About this translation" section? The move is the --addendum option, that's literally what it's for 🫶

The first line of the addendum must be a header saying where to put it in the document — and it can go before or after a given part of the document. The rest of the file gets added verbatim to the resulting file, no further processing, untouched, main character energy ✨

⚠️ Okay this part matters: if po4a-translate fails to add one of the given files, it discards the whole translation. Why so dramatic? Because the missing file could be the one naming the author — which would leave users unable to contact them and report bugs in the translation. so yeah, it's a whole thing 😭

The header has a pretty rigid syntax, ngl. For more info on how to use this feature and how it actually works, go read the po4a(7) man page 📖

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

po4a-gettextize(1), po4a-normalize(1), po4a-updatepo(1), po4a(7)

👑 AUTHORS 👑

  • Denis Barbier <barbier@linuxfr.org>
  • Nicolas François <nicolas.francois@centraliens.net>
  • Martin Quinson (mquinson#debian.org)

Copyright 2002-2023 by SPI, inc.

This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of GPL v2.0 or later (see the COPYING file).

okay that's the whole page bestie, go translate something iconic 💖✨🎀

perl v5.42.0 · 2025-07-13 — mwah, that's the version and date, catch you on the flip side 🫶💅

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