How to translate VideoPsalm into your own language

It is easily possible to translate VideoPsalm into your own language.
The translation process takes place directly from within VideoPsalm.
No specific tool is required, all you need is your own language knowledge (which is very precious, thanks!).

1. Contact us first
If you want VideoPsalm in your own language, or if you know someone who is ready to help with a few hours of his time, the first thing to do is to contact us. This will help to organize and synchronize the translation work.

2. Check if your language is in the list
VideoPsalm has already been translated into several languages.
Following translations were done by native speakers:

• Afrikaans (Thabo Pienaar)
• Chineese (Traditional, by Ta-Chien Lu)
• Czech (Kamil Zemánek)
• Dutch (Rick Timmers)
• English (VideoPsalm, non native speaker)
• Finnish (Erkka Juhaninmäki)
• French (VideoPsalm)
• German (VideoPsalm, non native speaker)
• Hungarian (planned by Lajos for in June 2017)
• Indonesian (Sien Gwan)
• Lithuanian (Moo)
• Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk, by Lars Olav Tveito)
• Portuguese Brazil (Antonio Leal)
• Portuguese Portugal (Jon Andrews and Dinho Capao City)
• Español Latino-America (Eduardo Ortíz)
• Swahili (planned by Samedi Amba)
• Swedish (Gunnar Klingberg - www.enyled.se)

The other translations have been done with an automatic translation tool and need native speakers help.

VideoPsalm language files are named with their international abbreviations. For example, for United States English, the file is called “en-US.json”.

The list of all VideoPsalm language files can be found here.

In case your language is in the list, for example Russian, or Ukrainian, follow the instructions from point 5.

3. In case your language is not at all translated (= you don't see it in the provided list)
Examples: Telugu (India) is not in the list yet, as well as Swahili.
You can still translate VideoPsalm into your language:

• Identify an existing source language file, one that you are most fluent with, for example English, or a language that is close to yours.
  The choice of the source language is important, because it can significantly simplify your translation work.
  
  VideoPsalm languages are listed here:
  a) In the option dialog, where you select the language:

         b) In the folder where the language files are stored:
             C:\Users\Public\Documents\VideoPsalm\Localization

         c) In its language import assistant:

The language import assistant enables people to add newly translated languages to their VideoPsalm.
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• Once you identified which available language you will use as source language, make a copy of its language file and rename it into your own language.
• Example
  - If your language is Telugu, copy the file called “en-US.json” into a file called “te-IN.json”.
  te-IN stands for Telugu-India. en-US stands for English-United States.
  However, you will sure know which source language is best for you.
  - If your language is Swahili, copy the file called “en-US.json” into “zw-TZ.json” (zw stands for Swahili and TZ for Tanzania). If you are fluent in French, you could instead copy the “fr-FR.json” into “zw-TZ.json” as a start.
• Actually, you can name your language file as you wish, as long as it is unique and has the “.json” file extension.
• If you know the dedicated ISO language name, usually a two lowercase letters, a “-” (minus sign), followed by two uppercase letters, please use it.
• Most languages of the world have a normalized name.
• Put your “te-IN.json” or “zw-TZ.json” file into the VideoPsalm language folder:
  C:\Users\Public\Documents\VideoPsalm\Localization
  and restart VideoPsalm.
• This file will give you a shell in which you will replace the English words with the corresponding Telugu or Swahili words.

4. Check that VideoPsalm recognized your language file
In the “Edit” tab, open the VideoPsalm options:

Select your language in the list, so that VideoPsalm displays its texts in the language that was the source for the language file:

Your language should appears in the list. However, because it is a copy of another language, you have to recognize it through its file name, displayed to the right, for example “te-IN” or “zw-TZ”:

At this point, you may want to revert to the English language, so that you won't misunderstand any wrongly translated text or function.

5. Now click on the “Translate VideoPsalm” button, to open the VideoPsalm translation tool:

This opens the translation tool window.
Maximize the window (1), and collapse the integrated help panel (2), to see more columns and rows:

In the left panel, labelled “Languages”, select the languages that you know. For example, select “Telugu” and “English". You will need to click twice on the language to select it: the first click marks the language in blue, and the second selects the checkbox.
Keep the “Comments” ticked, as they will help you translate the texts.

When you select a language in the “Languages” panel, a corresponding column appears in the right table. You should now see following columns (click to enlarge):

If necessary, you can resize and reorder the column headers with your mouse.

You can edit the texts like in an Excel spreadsheet.

To sort the texts alphabetically, click on a column header.

To filter the texts containing specific words, type the words in the “Search” textbox:

6. Save your work

Save your work by clicking the “Save” button.

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7. Check your translation
If you want to check your translation into its context, mark your language in the “Language” panel, then click the “Apply” button.
VideoPsalm will then instantly display your translated texts where they belong.

8. Send us your work

When your work is finished or advanced enough, send us your translation by clicking the “Send” button.
Send us the relevant zipped (compressed) files, as an email attachment.
In this example, this would be the “Spanish (Mexico), es-MX.zip” file.

Your work would enable us to add a new translation to the VideoPsalm Online Library.
Once we get your language file, it can be put online for others to use, in about one or two days depending on our availability.

When a new language gets added to the VideoPsalm Online Library, all VideoPsalm users get informed about it, via a toaster, the next time they start VideoPsalm:

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When they click on the toaster, VideoPsalm opens the language import assistant, where they can select which language(s) to add to their VideoPsalm:

Thanks in advance for your help.

We can exchange email securely through VideoPsalm's contact form.