Game Localization Handbook

[Derrick Drescher]

Inorder to keep the system time properly according to the present location, the timezone needs to be set. Instructions how to do this for OpenRC based systems and systemd based systems can be found in the system time article.

A locale is a set of information that most programs use for determining country and language specific settings. The locales and their data are part of the system library and can be found under the /usr/share/i18n/locales/ directory on most systems. A locale name is generally named ab_CD where ab is the two (or three) letter language code (as specified in ISO-639) and CD is the two letter country code (as specified in ISO-3166). Variants like @euro or @latin are often appended to locale names, e.g. de_DE@euro or nan_TW@latin. Please explore Wikipedia to read more about locales and related articles.

The command above lists the suffix in lower case without any hyphens, glibc understands both forms of the suffix, many other programs don't. The most common example of which is X. So it is best to always use UTF-8 in preference to utf8.

In some cases users may notice glitchy non-English representation in some applications like Krusader ( _bug.cgi?id=371582). Removing or commenting the LC_ALL="" line from /etc/env.d/02locale should fix the problem.

It's also possible, and pretty common especially in a more traditional UNIX environment, to leave the global settings unchanged, i.e. in the C locale. Users can still specify their preferred locale in their own shell configuration file:

Another way of configuring system is to leave it in the default C locale, but enable UTF-8 character representation at the same time. This option is achieved using the following settings in /etc/env.d/02locale:

The values of locale environment variables that have been explicitly set e.g. in an export statement (if using bash) are listed without double quotes. Those whose value has been inherited from other locale environment variables have their values in double quotes.

The keyboard layout used by the console is set in /etc/conf.d/keymaps by the keymap variable. Valid values can be found in /usr/share/keymaps/YOUR_ARCH/. i386 has further subdivisions into layout (qwerty/, azerty/, etc.). Some languages have multiple options - experiment with the various options to decide which one fits your needs best.

The keyboard layout to be used by the X server is specified in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/30-keyboard.conf by the XkbLayout option. For details visit the Xorg guide and the article about Keyboard layout switching.

For message based localization to work in programs that support it and have the nls USE flag, compile the programs with this flag set. Message strings are installed in /usr/share/locale//LC_MESSAGES/.mo files. Most of the programs using the Native Language Support (NLS) also need the gettext library to extract and use localized messages. Of course, Portage will automatically install it when needed.

There is also an additional LINGUAS variable that is used by some gettext-based build systems to control which localization files are built and installed. The variable takes in space-separated list of language codes, and a suggested place to set it is /etc/portage/make.conf:

Note that there is a large difference between LINGUAS being unset and being set to an empty value: Unset LINGUAS means to install all available languages. By contrast, with LINGUAS="", most ebuilds would install only the packages' default language but none of the LC_MESSAGES files.

A USE_EXPAND variable called L10N decides which extra localization support will be installed. This is commonly used for downloads of additional language packs by packages. Similar to LINGUAS, the variable takes a space separated list of language tags, and it can be set in /etc/portage/make.conf:

Note that while the common two letter language codes (like de or fr) are identical in LINGUAS and L10N, more complex entries have a different syntax because L10N uses IETF language tags (aka BCP 47). For example, pt_BR and sr@latin in LINGUAS become pt-BR and sr-Latn in L10N, respectively.

This page is based on a document formerly found on our main website gentoo.org.

The following people contributed to the original document: Alexander Holler, Steven Lucy, Benny Chuang, Lars Weiler, Tobias Scherbaum, Flammie Pirinen, , Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera (klondike)

They are listed here because wiki history does not allow for any external attribution. If you edit the wiki article, please do not add yourself here; your contributions are recorded on each article's associated history page.

Bert Esselink has been active in localization for over a decade. After graduating in technical translation and taking university classes in programming and computational linguistics he worked for several years as software localizer, localization engineer, and technical project manager at International Software Products. In 1996 he joined ALPNET in Amsterdam as localization manager before taking on the role of globalization manager, developing internal production quality standards. In January 2000 Bert joined Lionbridge to head up their European globalization consulting services.

In Handbook of Software Fault Localization: Foundations and Advances, distinguished computer scientists Prof. W. Eric Wong and Prof. T.H. Tse deliver a robust treatment of up-to-date techniques, tools, and essential issues in software fault localization. The authors offer collective discussions of fault localization strategies with an emphasis on the most important features of each approach.

The book also explores critical aspects of software fault localization, like multiple bugs, successful and failed test cases, coincidental correctness, faults introduced by missing code, the combination of several fault localization techniques, ties within fault localization rankings, concurrency bugs, spreadsheet fault localization, and theoretical studies on fault localization.

Perfect for researchers, professors, and students studying and working in the field, Handbook of Software Fault Localization: Foundations and Advances is also an indispensable resource for software engineers, managers, and software project decision makers responsible for schedule and budget control.

W. Eric Wong, PhD, is a Full Professor, Director of Software Engineering Program, and the Founding Director of Advanced Research Center for Software Testing and Quality Assurance in Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is also a Guest Researcher with the US National Institute of Standards and Technology. Professor Wong was the award recipient of the 2014 IEEE Reliability Society Engineer of the Year. In addition, he was the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Reliability from June 2016 to May 2022. He received his MS and PhD in Computer Science from Purdue University.

T.H. Tse received his PhD from London School of Economics, and was a Visiting Fellow at University of Oxford. He is an Honorary Professor in Computer Science with The University of Hong Kong after retiring from full professorship. He is a Steering Committee Chair of the IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability, and Security; and an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Reliability. He has over 270 publications, including a book with Cambridge University Press. He ranks internationally as no. 2 in metamorphic testing. He was awarded an MBE by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

This document is aimed at new localizers who have not necessarily had prior contact with LibreOffice or with the world of Open Source in general. It is based on Localization of OpenOffice.org 2.0 tutorial by Javier Sol.

Localizing LibreOffice does not require highly specialized knowledge of programming or of the Open Source world. It does not require knowledge of a specific operating system, such as Linux, either. You can localize LibreOffice on Microsoft Windows if you want to. Once you have done it, your localized resources can be very easily used to localize LibreOffice in other platforms (if your language script is supported by those platform, or less easily if this basic support is missing).

You do need to understand how to download programs and data from the Internet, how to install them and how to run them (following detailed instructions). You are also strongly advised to subscribe to at least one mailing list in which localization of LibreOffice is discussed.

Check out the list of LibreOffice language teams to make sure that there is not already a localization project for your language. If there is one, write to the person that appears as project contact, to know the status of the project and see if it is makes sense to participate in it. Bear in mind though that sadly, not all teams have taken time to list themselves in that page, so a missing table row doesn't necessarily mean that there is no team. You are also advised to check out other pages in Category:L10n and take a quick look at Weblate, and if the status of your locale is still unclear, probably contact the L10n mailing list.

Localizing LibreOffice is not a small task, and it has many levels. The lowest one is to assure that LibreOffice handles your script (if it is not Latin-based) correctly. LibreOffice should allow people in your country to work using your script, even if its interface is in English or other foreign language. Checking for support for your script might be a task that you can do by yourself, but translating whole LibreOffice interface to a new language is task much larger, requiring over one man/year, so ideally, several people should be involved.

If you start the localization process, you will have to subscribe to at least one mailing list, and your e-mail address will end up running around, and probably receiving a lot of spam. You should probably consider the quality of your e-mail provider's spam filters and if they aren't adequate, think about using an e-mail address that is different from your personal mail address for the whole localization process (and not only for LibreOffice).

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