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Mailman - The GNU Mailing List Management System
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Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by the Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA
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Mailman 2.1 is multilingual. By default it supports English, but
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additional languages may also be available. If the language you
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want to add is already supported by Mailman, then getting all your
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lists to also support that language is fairly easy. You just need
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to go to the administrative web pages, click on the "Languages"
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category, and select the languages you want your list to support.
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If the language you want to use has not been previously
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translated, or you don't know where to find the language pack for
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your language, read the section below or contact the Mailman
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internationalization mailing list mailman-i18n@python.org.
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ADDING NEW TRANSLATIONS
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Suppose you want to add new translations for a previously
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unsupported language, what steps would you need to take?
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First, you should send a message to mailman-i18n@python.org to
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make sure nobody has already created the translations for your
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language. In the example below, we're going to create a
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translation for the mythical language "Fredonia" which has the
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official language code of "xx".
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http://www.list.org/i18n.html
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for more information on internationalizing Mailman. Also, Simone
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Piunno -- who is the Italian translation champion -- has written
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up some nice instructions, which are provided below.
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In general you need to do two things to add translations for a
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language in Mailman. You need to translate the message catalog
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and you need to translate the templates.
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To translate the message catalog, grab the file
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messages/mailman.pot and make a copy called mailman.po in the
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subdirectory messages/xx/LC_MESSAGES. Then you edit the file and
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add the translations for each message identified in the catalog.
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It will be very helpful to have a good tool, such as KDE's KBabel
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tool, or po-mode for Emacs, for this part of the job.
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Once you've added your translations, you can then run msgfmt over
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your .po file to generate messages/xx/LC_MESSAGE/mailman.mo. Run
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"make" in the messages subdirectory to do this.
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Next, create the subdirectory templates/xx and translate each of
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the files in templates/en/*.{html,txt}. These you should also
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donate back to the Mailman project.
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To make Mailman and your lists aware of the new language, follow
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the directions in the section above.
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Q: If your language uses non-ASCII characters, such as the cedilla in
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French, how should you add these to the catalogs and templates?
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A: For any message that is destined for the web interface, use an
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HTML entity reference where appropriate. For messages destined
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for email, you should use the non-ASCII characters explicitly.
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This includes both for the message catalog and the templates.
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RESYNCHRONIZING THE CATALOG
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As Mailman development continues, new updated catalogs
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(i.e. mailman.pot files) will be made available. As mailman.pot
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changes, the individual language catalogs
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(i.e. xx/LC_MESSAGES/mailman.po files) need to be updated as well.
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In general, I as the Mailman maintainer will merge the new
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catalogs with the individual language catalogs, and commit the
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updates to CVS. Translators should grab the new mailman.po files
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from CVS and update the translated messages. They should also
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update the template translations.
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For best results, you will probably want to keep current on
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changes to Mailman 2.1 in the CVS. As Mailman 2.1 moves towards
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final release, the catalogs and templates should start to
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stabilize. Alternatively, occasionally I will make new English
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language packs available on SourceForge, and you can use these to
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create your translations.
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DONATING YOUR TRANSLATION BACK TO MAILMAN
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We'd really appreciate it if you donate your translations back to
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the Mailman project, so that others can benefit from your effort.
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You'll get credit of course, in the Mailman documentation. Here
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are the steps to donate your translations, either the first time
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or subsequent updates.
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The best thing to do is to send me <barry@python.org> a "tarball",
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i.e. a gzip'd tarfile, that can be unpacked in the top level
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directory of the Mailman CVS tree. This would be the directory
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containing this README-I18N.en file.
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Your tarball should contain two directories, where your donated
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In templates/xx there should be the translated templates, all the
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.txt and .html files, for your language, mirroring those in the
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English template directory (always the master copy).
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In messages/xx you should have a single directory LC_MESSAGES, and
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in that directory a file called mailman.po, which is the human
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readable catalog for your language. Do not send me the mailman.mo
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file, since I'll recreate it on my end, and that'll save on the
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That's basically it. If you need to include a README, please call
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it README.xx and put it in the messages/xx directory. README.xx
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can be in your native language.
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You can email the tarball to me, and if this is the first
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installation of the language, please tell me what the
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add_language() call in Defaults.py.in should be for your
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CURRENT LIST OF LANGUAGE SUPPORTED OUT-OF-THE BOX
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See http://www.list.org/i18n.html
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Here is the recipe that Simone Piunno used for the Italian
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"You can start without much technical knowledge, but if you want
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to keep your translation up-to-date (while the development branch
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evolves into the next stable release) you'd better learn how to
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Basically, you'll start by copying templates/en/* to your sandbox dir
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and then translating each file. Keep in mind that %(foo)s is a
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variable reference (much like %s in C) and must be left untouched.
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Also, you must be able to recognize a markup tag (eg, <foo>) because
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they must be left untouched too, and you should know how to escape
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non-ASCII characters, e.g. "�" -> "è", but only in html files.
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Remember that if you need a literal % sign, it must be doubled: %%
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Next, you copy messages/mailman.pot, renaming it to serbian.po.
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You can open this file with kbabel (a tool included in KDE SDK) and
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translate each string (original on the higher half of the window, your
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translation on the bottom half).
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If you are a masochist, you can even use emacs PO mode ;)
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Keep attention to the same markers and escaping as above, with the added
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complexity that here it's harder to say when a string is html (e.g. used
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for web UI) or pure text (e.g used for email interface)
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Then you try to compile you .po file:
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msgfmt -v -o serbian.mo serbian.po
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No error messages should appear.
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Next, copy your files on an installed mailman tree, and run
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bin/transcheck XX, where XX is your country code.
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No warning should appear (but maybe some warning is ok, if you really
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know what you're doing).
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Now, try to run your translation (add an "add_language" line to
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Mailman/Defaults.py) and check the many scattered pieces blend
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together well. Sometimes you'll need some adjustment.
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When you're satistied, pack up a tar.gz with the following structure:
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messages/XX/LC_MESSAGES/mailman.po
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templates/XX/admindbdetails.html
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templates/XX/admindbpreamble.html
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templates/XX/userpass.txt
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templates/XX/verify.txt
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(XX is your country code) and send it to Barry Warsaw. Do not
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include the mailman.mo file if you can help it.
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By that time, your translation could be somewhat obsolete, because
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templates and mailman.pot could have been evolved meanwhile.
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You'll need to check diffs to find what changed and how, so that
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you can easily update your files.
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Save everything everytime, you'll need it.
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README-I18N.en
