To find the translation files, go here:
https://translations.launchpad.net/cdda
yobbo: the recommended translation process is now just “go to the site”, “log in”, “start translating” 
Some quick notes:
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While the .po files are text files, and you can just edit them with any editor you want, there are tools specifically for editing .po files available (for example Poedit) which might make it a little easier.
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Entries like “%s” and “%d” in lines are automatically replaced with another word or name or number, so leave these in your translation, but move them to wherever is appropriate.
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There are a lot of strings to translate! Translation can be done bit by bit, perhaps just translate the most obvious items to start with.
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While there are a lot of translatable strings already, the translation files are by no means complete. There is a lot more to be added later, but any work done now will be transferred forwards, so it won’t have to be done again.
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If you are translating, it would be good to post and let others know, so that work is not duplicated.
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If there’s any issue with translation (such as impossible or ambiguous cases), i can try to fix it. There will be issues. Raise them here in the translations forum, or on the github issue tracker.
I’m looking forward to testing Cata-DDA with some real translations ;).
Hey Glyph, can you add a german de_DE file as well?
I would start translating that one then.
I put up a pull request with the de_DE.po file, you can grab it from
if you know your way around github.
I’m translating to Chinese now, but I found there hadn’t any text of the library and the Hazardous waste.
this is my project:
https://translations.launchpad.net/cataclysm/trunk/
It was started today.(2013-7-10 peking time)
progress rate :4%
(2013-9-17 peking time)
progress rate :99.8%
The Chinese version zh_cn.po from .pot was finished today!
But some text is still in English,
this list is for the things which .pot didn’t included:
1.the attribute information with press "@"button;
2.the hostile targets name;
3.some menu text;
4.the name and information of CBM;
5.the basic information ,such as weight, for the item;
6.the help menu, the computer menu and so on;
7.the long-text information of the console, as which in institute.
8.some words of the console.
What if there is another variable that is not found in the english version.
For example in Spanish (and several other languages I know) there are at least 4 words for “the”.
There is the singular male, singular female, plural male and plural female. (El, la, los, las respectively).
"You pick up the computer."In Spanish the proper tranlation would be
"Usted recoge la computadora"
This particular translation uses the female “the” because computer is considered a female object (hard to explain, it has latin roots). But if there was a male object (nacho, taco, frijoles) then it would be “el” and not “la”
So I guess the question is: how can we put in a variable so that the computer knows which “the” to use?
Another question that I know transfers to other languages is formality. In Spanish (and French IIRC) there are at least two words for you. There is the formal version (usted) and the informal version (tu). Which should we use?
"You pick up the combat knife. "
"Hey, you, wait up. We need to talk. "
"Hey you. Put the gun down or I blow your head off.
[quote=“Konata, post:5, topic:2072”]this is my project:
https://translations.launchpad.net/cataclysm/trunk/+pots/zh-cn.po/zh_CN/+translate
It was started today.(2013-7-10 peking time)
progress rate :4%
(2013-7-13 peking time)
progress rate :100%
The Chinese version zh_cn.po from .pot was finished today![/quote]
So fast! 0_0
Did you work with an already-translated version, or did you translate everything from scratch?
Either way, very impressive, thank you.
[quote=“Konata, post:5, topic:2072”]But some text is still in English,
this list is for the things which .pot didn’t included:
1.the attribute information with press "@"button;
2.the hostile targets name;
3.some menu text;
4.the name and information of CBM;
5.the basic information ,such as weight, for the item;
6.the help menu, the computer menu and so on;
7.the long-text information of the console, as which in institute.[/quote]
We’ll have to redouble our efforts to mark strings translatable to keep up!
Article Gender: I think the correct solution for this is to package the article with the object, so instead of the message being “You pick up the %s.” and the name of the object being “computer”, the message will be “You pick up %s.”, and the item name is “the computer”. Unfortunately even in english this might instead be “a computer”, so I’m not sure this will be correct either. I’m not at all sure gettext has a solution for this problem.
By the way, it does have a solution for plurilization, for languages that have more than singular/plural, and we need to see about adding support for that at some point.
Formality level: NPC dialogue is probably all going to be informal, and game messages should be formal. This might vary by language though. For example Japanese has a formality and “humility” scale, and I’m not sure where conputer interfaces go on this continuum.
I don’t know if you can omit the article, for example:
You pick up: “computer”.
For languages that use classifiers heavily this is probably the easiest (also laziest) solution.
[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:7, topic:2072”]Did you work with an already-translated version, or did you translate everything from scratch?
Either way, very impressive, thank you.[/quote]
I didn’t worked in any translation group, but someone in this grop helped us.
The translation templates were great! Thank all of them who had made it!
Try to work with russian translation and have a littile question: how can I use my .po file in game?
Oops, I just found this link: https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/blob/master/TRANSLATING.md
see russian subforum
https://translations.launchpad.net/cataclysm-dda/trunk
I’ve ben working on the german translation for some time now, i guess its about 1/2 finished.
Help would be highly appreciated. There are still a lot of Itemdescriptions to translate.
Also a reread of already translated stuff wouldnt hurt eighter 
Here is my translation branch on github: https://github.com/OzoneH3/Cataclysm-DDA/tree/translate_de
Ok, I’ve decided to get some fellow countrymen to play the game intensly, and I’ll do a serbian translation. It’ll be here in a day or two; the assets.files were all the same, so I just picked the russian package and corrected appropriately.
As for right now I downloaded the template and are starting es_ES for Spanish, cheers!
Hey tarik, shouldn’t it be es_LA? Because es_ES is spanish from Spain.
You are correct! I will make sure to change the name when I’m finished 
Good luck then
I want to start to translate to spain spanish, and want to know the decision about the article gender
Sorry, i missed that question. Support for gendered nouns will not be coming until after the next stable release at the earliest. For now the preferred solution is to indicate that the form is indeterminate, for example “You see a %s.” might be “Tú ves un(a) %s.”. It’s not pretty, but full support will be quite complicated to implement.
I can translate the Game in Italian, since it’s my mother tongue.
But I have no idea how to get around to Github so…where do I pick the game files for translation purposes?