Personal Backup

© 2001 - , Dr. Jürgen Rathlev
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Translations to other languages

Personal Backup basically uses English captions and dialogs. The translation to German and other languages was done by using GNU Gettext for Delphi by Lars B. Dybdahl. This system makes it very easy for anyone to create a translation to another language. There are just two things needed (more info):

Special editors

The translation work is greatly facilitated by the use the powerful Po Editor:

Help needed

People who wish to help by creating translations to other languages are welcomed. First, they need to download the po templates for Personal Backup.
Note: As Personal Backup was created with the Delphi 10 development system that has full Unicode support, there are no restrictions on the character sets able to be used for the translation.

Editing a translation

After downloading the templates you should create an appropriate work space on your computer:

Recommended directory structure

  1. Create a new directory pb-phrases in My Documents
  2. Copy all files from the downloaded templates zip to this folder
  3. Create a subdirectory languages
  4. There, create subdirectories for each language you wish to support

The further procedure differs depending on whether you want to create a new translation or edit an existing one

Creating a new translation

  1. Copy all templates to the subfolder of your language
  2. Open one of these copied po files one after another with a text editor. It is recommended to use Poedit to do so. Don't forget to edit the po file header. In Poedit click on Translation - Properties to open the dialog shown in the screenshot at right.
  3. Insert the translated texts. Make sure that the translated texts phrases have similar lengths to the originals so that they will fit into their fields in the desktop window.
  4. Open the English version of the file language.cfg (to be found in the root folder pb-phrases) with any text editor (Notepad or PsPad) and remove all "#" signs at the beginning of the lines. Then translate all language descriptors (not the shortcuts) to your language and save as new file in the same folder as the translated po files.
  5. Send the new po files if possible as zip archive back to me as an . I will then integrate the translation into the program package.

Editing an existing translation

  1. Download the po files belonging to your language
  2. Copy all files from the downloaded zip to the subfolder of your language
  3. Use a text editor or Poedit to adit the translation.
  4. Send the modified po files if possible as zip archive back to me as an . I will then integrate the translation into the program package.

Updating translations

Templates will change on new program versions. GNU Gettext for Delphi has tools to update the templates and to merge the new templates with the existing translations. Because of this, only new and changed phrases have to be edited.
I will carry out the merging of the new templates with the previous translation after each update and will update the translations using the translation portal DeepL. This can be done directly via the Internet portal or by using Poedit  which provides restricted access to DeepL. If anyone wishes to merge template and translation himself, he will need to download and install Gnu GetText for Delphi on his computer after which an entry will be found in the context menu of all po files for merging them with the templates.

Update process

  1. Copy the current templates to the directory pb-phrases
  2. Right-click on the translated po file and select ggmerge
  3. Select the po template and check Remember settings
  4. Start file merging
  5. Enter the editor (e.g. Poedit) to add and change translations

Testing the translation

You can test your translation with an installed version of Personal Backup. This will ensure that all phrases fit into their fields on the desktop. Possibly some phrases will have to be abbreviated.
Perform the following steps:

  1. Open the po file with PoEdit and edit if necessary. When saving the file, the mo file will automatically be updated.
  2. Go to the folder where Personal Backup is installed (usually: c:\Program Files\Personal Backup 6\) on 32 bit systems or c:\Program Files (x86)\Personal Backup 6\ on 64 bit systems).
  3. Create a subdirectory <xx>\LC_MESSAGES in the locale subfolder (administrator rights are required). xx must be replaced with the two letter language code of your translation (refer to file language.cfg).
  4. Copy the following mo files into this new subdirectory (administrator rights required):
    default.mo, units.mo, dialogs.mo and, if available, delphi10.mo and indy10.mo (all files must belong to the language into which you are translating, see the download section below). Then copy the file language.cfg which belongs to your language.
  5. Open the English version of the file language.cfg (to be found in the Personal Backup program folder) with any text editor (Notepad or PsPad) and remove the "#" sign at the beginning of the line with your language.
  6. Restart Personal Backup. You will now find a new menu item for your language beneath Preferences ⇒ Language to change to your language.

Downloads: