Add internationalisation README

2021-02-17 12:32:00 +01:00
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+# novelWriter Internationalisation
+
+The `i18n` folder contains the internationalisation files for novelWriter.
+There are two types of files. The `nw_XX.qm` files are for localisation of the
+main GUI, and the `project_XX.json` files are JSON files with translation maps
+for the novelWriter projects.
+
+## GUI Localisation
+
+The `.qm` files are not generated by default. They can be built with:
+```bash
+python3 setup.py qtlrelease
+```
+
+To add a new translation file, please add a new entry in the `novelWriter.pro`
+file under the `TRANSLATIONS` variable. Please use the underscore syntax for
+file names as the importer expects this format.
+
+After adding the entry in the `.pro` file, run:
+```bash
+python3 setup.py qtlupdate
+```
+
+This will build a new `nw_XX.ts` file for the language you just added. The file
+can then be edited with the Qt 5 Linguist application. Please select "English"
+and "United Kingdom" as the source langauge when prompted.
+
+When you're done editing, you can build the `nw_XX.qm` file and test it in
+novelWriter.
+
+**Note:** This requires that you have the tools Qt 5 Linguist and `pylupdate5`
+installed on your system.
+
+## Project Localisation
+
+Projects can have a different language setting than the GUI itself. The files
+with format `project_XX.json` are simple translation maps for text that goes
+into the exported documents.
+
+The files are loaded based on the main GUI spell check language or the
+project's spell check language. The project's spell check language takes
+precedence over the GUI spell check language.
+
+Since these are used mainly as replacement lookups, they are maintained as
+plain JSON files. The main usage is to generate chapter headers as number
+words.
+
+There is no trick to using these files. Just copy the `project_en.json` file,
+rename it, and edit it. Please use the underscore as separator if a language
+needs to be localised to a specific country under a language. The importer will
+for instance look for `en_GB` or `en_US` first, then use `en` if either is not
+found. If there are no matching files, the project falls back to using English.