Current Status of Internationalization

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If you supply new translations, make sure, they correspond to a stable release of DSpace and do not contain English tags nor references to your DSpace instance (e.g. name of your Institution). In partially translated Messages_xx.properties, just omit the untranslated tags. Messages.properties will be used as a fallback anyway and untranslated tags are easiear detectable with tools like the Ecliplse Resource Bundle Editor if omitted.

Here is a list of new tags from DSpace 1.4.2 to DSpace 1.5 NewTags142To15.txt so you might easily update an existing translation.

Translation work in progress

If you are in the progress of translating or upgrading existing translations, please communicate your efforts here and in the dspace lists to avoid redundant work and get feedback on your translations. The more hands join in the tedious work of translation the better.

Available translations of Messages.properties for JSP-UI

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Parts of localizations not yet managed at Sourceforge SVN

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• include the Standard Tag Library in the JSP - <%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/fmt" prefix="fmt" %>
• define the key you want in config/Messages.properties
• use the key instead of the text in the JSP, see examples below
  The messages may can now be changed in the appropriate config/Messages_xx.propertiesfile. This must be done at build-time, because it is placed in the dspace.war.

  Example: Basic key use

• Old JSP

  Code Block
  <h1>Search Results</h1>

• New JSP

  Code Block
  <h1><fmt:message key="jsp.search.results.title" /></h1>

• Messages.properties

  Code Block
  jsp.search.results.title = Search Results

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Phrases may have parameters to be passed in, to make the job of translating easier, reduce the number of 'keys' and to allow translators to make the translated text flow more appropriately for the target language.

• Old JSP

  Code Block
  <p>Results <%= r.getFirst() %> to <%= r.getLast() %> of <%= r.getTotal() %></p>

• New JSP

  Code Block
  <fmt:message key="jsp.search.results.text"> <fmt:param><%= r.getFirst() %></fmt:param> <fmt:param><%= r.getLast() %></fmt:param> <fmt:param><%= r.getTotal() %></fmt:param> </fmt:message>

• Messages.properties

  Code Block
  <p>jsp.search.results.text = Results \{0\}-\{1\} of \{2\}</p>

  (Note: JSTL 1.0 does not seem to allow JSP <%= %> expressions to be passed in as values of attribute in <fmt:param value=""/>)

To Do

• In the servlet code:
  • In `AuthorizeAdminServlet`, some English is passed for direct display in the title through the attribute `edit_title`. E.g. "Item".
• `config/dstat.map`
• Support for easy customisation of UI without needing to fork language bundles.
• Display dates, numbers etc. according to Locale. (JSTL has tags for this)
• Searching in non-Western languages such as Chinese; Lucene cannot parse/separate words
• Multi-lingual metadata. Submission forms do not include language info for metadata. (The "language" DC field relates to the language of the content, i.e. the bitstreams.)
  • HPCLab, University of Patras, has submitted a new patch addressing this issue, against 1.4.2 (including the I18N patch) here. Please test and verify in order to remove from to-do.
• Author and title ordering.
• Browse controls ("Jump to" 0-9, A-Z) – support for other characters
• Use of Collator fixes non-English language sort order problems. Not developed but small. No schema changes. JimDowning
• i18n of non-Web UI – e.g. command line tools like the import/export tools. Currently the dictionaries are only stored in the .war file, so other parts of code won't have access to them.

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