updating and testing new langauge translation .po file

I’ve been actively translating Audacity into Vietnamese for about a year now.
Of course all of our translation work has been properly submitted in the right channels and has been included in several releases (thanks to the mailing lists, Rocky, transifex, etc).
Trouble is there’s a significant lag between submission to the official teams and actual practical usage (especially on linux).
For example we recently submitted an updated .PO file for the 3.10 release but it may be months before 3.10 will be available and usable on Linux.

These days using ppa repositories (my preferred method) only the 3.0.2 release is available. Which is fine by me.

My question is, how can we “override” the default language file that comes pre-packaged with said release?

For example now I have a usable .PO file that’s fully updated and over 90% translated whereas the pre-packaged default is only 70% translated.
How can I integrate that and actually use/test my updated PO file?

The main reason of course is to TEST the user interface translation to make sure it’s appropriate and complete.
Translating is a very nuanced and picky business.
For example the appropriate translation differs for: a tool tip, a button, a menu item.
Seeing it actually on the real user interface helps us sort that out and helps us choose exactly the most helpful and understandable translation.

I have nosed around places like /usr/share/locale/… nothing directly related to audacity it seems.
I can’t seem to find the magic Audacity folder (on linux) that contains all the .PO files for all the languages. If I found that then I could just drop it in of course.

Would any of you have any suggestions on how to “override” or “manually update” the .PO language file on Linux?
Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers!

fyi: I’m running linux mint 20.x .
ps: yes I’m aware of the .app image option containing the 3.0.5 release. That’s wonderful and incredibly easy. HUGE “thumbs up” to that. However once again the main point is to be able to TEST new translation files immediately if possible.

Audacity is now releasing AppImage builds. The first few builds had some problems, but they have been getting better and the 3.1.0 AppImage is looking good. It will be available via the Audacity website: Audacity ® | Downloads


I don’t think you can, other than by building Audacity from the source code, because it is compiled into the app. The app uses “.mo” files that are created during the build process, not the “.po” files that are created by the translators.


I’m aware of that - you guys do an amazing job.

You can “compile” the .po to a .mo file with msgfmt and try dropping that in to replace the shipped .mo file. But if the later source code has changed the msgkey string used to look up a translation, it will not be found. Only changes of the translation of unchanged English strings could be tested.

Yeah i noticed that!! Holy hot damn that was quick!! I think then whole team helping put that together deserves a 1 hour standing ovation!

Thank you for the suggestion of compiling from source. Being a part of this project and a Linux user, that’s an angle I’ve been lookin to explore in depth anyhow.
I’ve got a bunch of prerequisites including cmake etc so a case of beer and a Saturday I’m sure we can bang that out.

Now knowing that’s the only reasonable option I’ll go ahead and dig.

If I find any shortcuts along the way (eg: compilation of a single file or any form of drag and drop ) then I’ll be sure to post here in detail.

The simple fact that our translations can be included and usable in any way whatsoever is already impressive and magical to me so I can’t complain… just glad to help.

Perfect! Thank you so much!
I just explored msgkey related info and now have a solid handle on it. Indeed that’s a key component to making things work.
I’ve been looking to figure out the guts/details/programming angles anyhow and that’s a solid step.

I appreciate your time.
If I find anything new or noteworthy I’ll post it here.
Cheers.