lektor-i18n 0.1

# Lektor i18n plugin

This plugins enable a smarter way to translate a Lektor static website using old-good PO files. So you can use your beloved translation processes and tools.

## Principles

The idea of this plugin is to capture the sentences from your content, and populate a standard Gettext PO file. Using usual tools, user can translate these files, very easily. Then the plugin will merge the translations into new _alternative_ content files, providing a translated website.

## Configuration

### Configuration file

configs/i18n.ini:

content = en translations = fr,es,it i18npath = i18n

Where :

• content is the language used to write contents.lr files (default is en)

• translations is the list of target languages (you want to translate into).

• i18npath is the directory where translation files will be produced/stored (default is i18n). This directory needs to be relative to root path.

### Translatable fields

In order for a field to be marked a translatable, an option has to be set in the field definition. Both blocks and flowblocks fields are subjects to translations.

in flowblocks/*.ini and/or models/*.ini, mark a field as translatable with :

[model] name = Page label = {{ this.title }}

[fields.title] label = Title type = string translate = True

[fields.body] label = Body type = markdown translate = True

Both title and body are now translatable. It means that during the parsing phase, all sentences from title or body fields from then contents.lr files with Page model will populate the collected PO file.

Another flowblock example:

[block] name = Section Block button_label = Section

[fields.title] label = Title type = string translate = True

[fields.body] label = Body type = markdown translate = True

[fields.image] label = Image type = select source = record.attachments.images

[fields.image_position] label = Image Position type = select choices = left, right choice_labels = Left, Right default = right

Here again, body and title will be translated. But image and image_position won’t.

### Non-english content

Thanx to a limitation of msginit it’s not so easy to translate a website with default language set to anything but english.

So if your default content language is not english, you will have to edit the first contents-en.po file and remove the translations (by hand ?)…

## Installation

### Prerequisites

#### Lektor

This plugin has been tested with Lektor 1.2.x.

#### GetText

A recent vesion of GetText needs to be installed on the system. For a Debian/Ubuntu system, this means a simple :

sudo apt-get install gettext

On OS X, use a decent package manager, like MacPort or Brew. With brew :

sudo brew install gettext

Specificaly, we will need to call the msginit program distributed with recente versions of gettext.

### Installation

Very straightforward :

$ lektor plugins add i18n

Verify installation with a simple :

$ lektor plugins add i18n … i18n (version 0.1) …

## Usage

The translation mechanism is hooked into the build system. So translating a website just means building the website.

$ lektor build

On first call, a new i18n directory (can be changed in configuration file) will be created on top the lektor tree.

This directory will be populated with a single contents.pot file, compiling all the sentences found by the plugin. The list of fields eligible to translation is configured in the models/flows definition with translate=True added to each field.

For each translation language (still from the configuration file), a content-<language>.po file will be created/updated. These are the files that need to be translated with your prefered tool (like [POEdit](http://poedit.net) or [Transifex](http://transifex.com)).

All translation files (contents-*.po) are then compiled and merged with the original contents.lr files to produce all the contents-<language>.lr files in their respective directories.

Due to the way Lektor building system is designed, all these steps happen on every build. This means that sometime, after translating the contents-*.po files, it might be required to run the build system twice to see the translation appear in the final HTML files.

### Project file

It’s still the user responsability to modify the project file in order to include the expected languages :

[alternatives.en] name = English primary = yes locale = en_US

[alternatives.fr] name = French url_prefix = /fr/ locale = fr

See [Lektor Documentation](https://www.getlektor.com/docs/content/alts/) for more information.

## Support

This plugin is provided as-is by NumeriCube a human-sized Paris-based company prodiving tailored services to smart customers.

We will be happy to try to help you with this plugin if need. Just file an issue on our [GitHub account](https://gihub.com/numericube/lektor-i18n-plugin/).