Ubuntu – How to use gettext to make QML files translatable

application-developmentgettextinternationalizationqmlqt

I'd like to write a QtQuick app based on Python (PySide) and QML.

I know Qt apps have got their own translation technology, but I would like to stick to gettext for this one. I'd like to know if it's possible to:

Mark strings for translation in QML files in a way gettext tools can extract them into a .pot file
Have gettext translate QML files at runtime.

I know this is done in the Unity 2D code, in C++, so I'm wondering how it can be done with Python.

Note: I'm talking about using exclusively gettext at runtime, not about converting between gettext and Qt Linguist formats.

Best Answer

Generally speaking there is no way to use gettext translation in QT because the library uses an internal translation mechanism (Qtranslate and .ts files) as stated here QTBUG-2404.

However, there is a viable alternative.

Shipping with QT there is a toolkit called lconvert that can be used to convert .ts files to .po and vice versa.

So you can extract all of your translation with:

lupdate

Then use lconvert to obtain a po file:

lconvert -of po -o file.po file.ts

After translation you can convert back the po file to ts:

lconvert -of ts -o file.ts file.po

Then you can use it in your software.

lupdate can bu used both for QT an QtQuick.

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I've found a solution: use the locale Python module instead of gettext

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from locale import gettext as _
locale.bindtextdomain('qreator', '/opt/extras.ubuntu.com/qreator/share/locale/')
locale.textdomain('qreator')

Thanks to Juha Sahakangas on the #gtk+ IRC channel for providing the explanation:

For this particular case the locale module needs to be used instead of gettext. Python's gettext module is pure python, it doesn't actually set the text domain in a way that the C library can read, but locale does (by calling libc). So long as that's done, GtkBuilder already works the way you're asking it to.

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