&kbabel; has 3 modes which can be used to search translated PO message strings: Searching translation, using a translation database Rough translation &kbabeldict; Translation database allows you to store translations in a database based on Berkeley Database IV, &ie; it is stored in a binary file on your disk. The database guarantees fast searching in a large number of translations. This mode is the one best integrated with &kbabel;. Besides searching and rough translation it also supports the following features: Every new translation typed in the &kbabel; editor can be automatically stored in the database. This database can be used for diff-ing msgid. Of course, the more translations are stored in the database, the more productive you can be. To fill the database, you can use the Database tab in the preferences dialog or you can turn on automatic addition of every translated messages on the same tab. You can configure this searching mode and how it should be used by selecting Settings Configure Dictionary Translation Database in &kbabel; menu. The Generic tab contains general settings for searching in the database. Search in whole database (slow) Do not use good keys, search in the whole database. This is slow, but will return the most precise results. Search in list of "good keys" (best) Use good keys strategy. This option will give you the best tradeoff between speed and exact matching. Return the list of "good keys" (fast) Just return good keys, do not try to eliminate any more texts. This is the fastest provided method, but can lead to a quite large number of imprecise matches. Case sensitive Distinguish case of letters when searching the text. Normalize white space Skip unnecessary white space in the texts, so the searching will ignore small differences of white space, ⪚ number of spaces in the text. Remove context comment Do not include context comments in search. You will want this to be turned on. Character to be ignored Here you can enter characters, which should be ignored while searching. Typical example would be accelerator mark, &ie; & for &kde; texts. The Search tab contains finer specification for searching the text. You can define how to search and also allows to use another special way of searching called Word substitution. By substituting one or two words the approximate text can be found as well. For example, assume you are trying to find the text My name is Andrea. Equal Text from database matches if it is the same as the searched string. In our example it can be My name is &Andrea (if & is set as ignored character in Characters to be ignored on Generic tab). Query is contained Text from database matches if the searched string is contained in it. For our example it can be My name is Andrea, you know?. Query contains Text from database matches if the searched string contains it. For our example it can be Andrea. You can use this for enumerating the possibilities to be found. Regular Expression Consider searched text as a regular expression. This is mainly used for &kbabeldict;. You can hardly expect regular expressions in PO files. Use one word substitution If the query text contains less words than specified below, it also tries to replace one of the words in the query. In our example it will find Your name is Andrea as well. Max number of words in the query Maximal number of words in a query to enable one word substitution. Local characters for regular expressions Characters to be considered part of regular expressions. Two-word substitution is not implemented yet. The Database tab allows to define where is the database stored on disk (Database folder) and if it should be used for automatic storing of the new translations (Auto add entry to database). In this case you should specify the author of the new translation in Auto added entry author. The rest of the tab allows you to fill the database from PO files that already exist. Use one of the buttons in the middle of the dialog box. The progress of the file load will be shown by progress bars below the buttons. The Repeated strings button should be used in the special case where one translated string is repeated many times, to prevent storing unnecessary copies. Here you can limit the stored strings. Filling the database Filling the database by existing PO-files On the Good keys tab are the thresholds to specify how to fill the list of good keys. Minimum number of query words in the key (%) specifies exactly that. Text will need to contain only this per cent of the words to qualify as good key. Opposite can be specified via Minimum number of words of the key also in the query (%). The length of the words can be set by Max length spinbox. Searched text typically contains number of generic words, ⪚ articles. You can eliminate the words based on the frequency. You can discard them by Discard words more frequent than or consider as always present by frequent words are considered as in every key. This way the frequent words will be almost invisible for queries. This searching mode is based on matching the same original English string (the msgid) translated in some other language in an auxillary PO file. It is very common for Romance languages to have similar words, similarly for Anglo-Saxon and Slavic ones. For example, say I wanted to translate the word on, from kdelibs.po, into Romanian but have no clue. I look in the same file for French and find actif, and in the Spanish one find activado. So, I conclude that the best one in Romanian will be active. (Of course, in English instead of on the word could have been active or activated, which would have made the translation process easier.) &kbabel; automates this task. Currently you can define only one auxiliary file to search. You can configure this searching mode by selecting Settings Configure Dictionary PO Auxiliary from the &kbabel; menu. In the Configure Dictionary PO Auxiliary dialog you can select the path to the auxiliary PO file. To automate PO-file switching when you change current edited file there are many variables delimited by @ char that are replaced by appropriate values: @PACKAGE@ The name of application or package currently being translated. For example, it can expand to kbabel, kdelibs, konqueror and so on. @LANG@ The language code. For example can expand to: de, ro, fr etc. @DIRn@ where n is a positive integer. This expands to the n-th folder counted from the filename (right to left). The edit line displays the actual path to the auxiliary PO file. While it is best to use the provided variables in a path it is possible to choose an absolute, real path to an existing PO file. Let's take an example. I'm Romanian and I have some knowledge about French language and I work on &kde; translation. First step is to download a very fresh kde-l10n-fr.tar.bz2 from the &kde; &FTP; site or to use the CVS system to put on my hard-disk a French translation tree. I do this into /home/clau/cvs-cvs.kde.org/kde-l10n/fr. My PO sources folder is in /home/clau/cvs-cvs.kde.org/kde-l10n/ro. Do not forget to select PO Auxiliary as the default dictionary and check Automatically start search on the Search tab from &kbabel;'s Preferences dialog. A compendium is a file containing a collection of all translation messages (pairs of msgid and msgstr) in a project, ⪚ in &kde;. Typically, compendium for a given language is created by concatenating all PO files of the project for the language. Compendium can contain translated, untranslated and fuzzy messages. Untranslated ones are ignored by this module. Similarly to Auxiliary PO, this searching mode is based on matching the same original string (msgid) in a compendium. Currently you can define only one compendium file to search. This mode is very useful if you are not using the translation database and you want to achieve consistent translation with other translations. By the way, compendium files are much easier to share with other translators and even other translation projects because they can be generated for them as well. You can configure this searching mode by selecting Settings Configure Dictionary PO Compendium in &kbabel;'s menu. In Configure Dictionary PO Compendium dialog you can select the path to a compendium file. To automate compendium file switching when you change the translation language, there is a variable delimited by @ char which si replaced by appropriate value: @LANG@ The language code. For example can expand to: de, ro, fr etc. In the edit line is displayed the actual path to compendium PO file. While you had best use provided variables in path, it's possible to choose an absolute, real path to an existing PO file to be used as a compendium. A very fresh compendium for &kde; translation into ⪚ French you can download fr.messages.bz2 from the &kde; &FTP; site. You can define how to search in the compendium using options below the path. They are divided into two groups: text-matching options, where you can specify how the text is compared and whether to ignore fuzzy translations, and message-matching options, which determine if the translation from compendium should be a substring of searching message or vice versa. Case sensitive If the matching of message in compendium should distinguish between uppercase and lowercase letters. Ignore fuzzy string If the fuzzy messages in the compendium should be ignored for searching. The compendium can contain fuzzy messages, since it is typically created by concatenating the PO files of the project which can include fuzzy messages. Untranslated ones are ignored always (You can't search for translation in untranslated messages, right?) Only whole words If the matching text should start and end at the boundaries of words. A text matches if it is equal to search text A text in compendium matches the search text only if it is exactly the same (of course using the options above). A text matches if it is similar to search text A text in compendium matches the search text only if it is similar. Both texts are compared by short chunks of letters (3-grams) and at least half of the chunks has to be same. A text matches if it contains search text A text in compendium matches the search text if it contains the search text. A text matches if it is contained in search text A text in compendium matches the search text if it is contained the search text. A text matches if it contains a word of search text The texts are divided to words and a text in compendium matches the search text only if it contains some word from the search text.