Translating Immortal Barons¶

Immortal Barons can show its interface and its help pages in more than one language. This guide explains how to improve an existing translation and how to add a new language.

You do not need to know Go. Translations live in standard gettext PO files (.po), which you can edit in any text editor or in a PO editor such as Poedit.

Two sets of text¶

There are two separate groups of text, kept in two places:

The interface — menus, prompts, on-screen messages, and reports. Catalogs live in internal/i18n/locale/<lang>.po.
The help pages — the topics shown in the in-game Guide and on the website Guide. Catalogs live in po/help/<lang>.po.

The website's own pages — this guide, the FAQ, and the setup pages — are kept in English only.

Both groups use the same PO format, so the editing work feels the same. Only the commands that refresh the files differ.

What to install¶

gettext — provides msgmerge, msgfmt, and msginit. Most systems already have it; otherwise install it with your package manager.
po4a — used for the help pages only.
Optional: Poedit, a graphical PO editor.

The PO format in one minute¶

Each entry has an English source line and its translation:

msgid "Buy Regions"
msgstr "Regionen kaufen"

msgid is the English text. Never change it.
msgstr is your translation. Fill it in.
An empty msgstr means "not translated yet". The game shows the English text instead, so you can translate a little at a time.
A #, fuzzy line above an entry marks a guess that needs review. The game treats it as untranslated (it shows English) until you check the entry and remove the #, fuzzy line.
Keep every placeholder — %d, %s, and so on — exactly as it appears in the msgid, in the same order. A wrong placeholder can break the display. A test checks this.
Do not create two entries with the same msgid.

Improve an existing translation¶

Interface¶

Open internal/i18n/locale/<lang>.po (for example de.po).
Fill in or correct the msgstr lines.
Save. That is all — the game reads the .po file directly.

Help pages¶

Open po/help/<lang>.po.
Fill in or correct the msgstr lines.
Rebuild the translated pages:

scripts/gen-help-translations.sh

This writes the translated Markdown under internal/help/content.<lang>/.

Refresh the catalogs after the English text changes¶

When the game's English text changes, the catalogs need new entries. These commands add them; run them from the project root.

Interface¶

python scripts/gen-ui-pot.py     # collect the English interface strings
scripts/merge-ui-po.sh           # add new/changed ones to every locale .po

New strings appear with an empty msgstr, and changed ones become #, fuzzy, for you to translate.

Help pages¶

scripts/gen-help-translations.sh

This refreshes po/help/*.po from the English topics and rebuilds the translated Markdown. Changed English is marked for review.

Add a new language¶

Register the language in one place, then create and translate its two catalogs. Use the two-letter language code (for example es for Spanish). Everything else picks the language up on its own: the in-game menu, the website, and the refresh scripts all read the language set from the list below and from the catalog files on disk.

Add one line to Languages in internal/i18n/languages.go:

{Code: "<code>", Name: "<endonym>"},

The endonym is the language's name in its own tongue (for example "Español"). This is what makes the game and the website offer the language.

Create the interface catalog from the template:

msginit -i po/ui/immortal-barons.pot -l <code> -o internal/i18n/locale/<code>.po --no-translator

(Run from po/ui/ you can omit -i — msginit finds the template on its own.)

Create the help catalog: add <code>:po/help/<code>.po to the [po4a_paths] line in po4a.cfg, then run scripts/gen-help-translations.sh. It creates po/help/<code>.po and the translated pages.

Then translate the two new .po files as described above.

Send your work¶

Open a pull request with the changed .po files. For help pages, also include the regenerated files under internal/help/content.<lang>/.