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Working with the PHP Documentation

Information for Translators

Table of Contents

There are many active translations out there of the PHP documentation. Some languages are being maintained by a group of translators (eg. the German), some are one person projects (eg. the Japanese). There are quite a few things for translators to know, though these are simple.

Starting a New Translation

Starting a new language translation comes down to the following simple steps:

  • Consult the phpdoc mailing list to see if the translation is already in progress. If it is, read our tips for that case, disregard the following and coordinate with the other translators on the translation mailing list.
  • Let the php doc mailing list (phpdoc@lists.php.net) know that you are interested in starting a new translation.
  • Once approved, ask for a CVS account. Mention that you would like to start a new translation and be sure to include the name of the translation in this request.
  • The PHP documentation group will then ask » systems@php.net to create a new translation. This involves setting up a new mailing list (doc-LANGCODE@lists.php.net), a newsgroup (php.doc.LANGCODE), and a CVS module (phpdoc-LANGCODE). At this point the LANGCODE should also be added to the docweb system.
  • Check out the modules named phpdoc and phpdoc-LANGCODE (using the phpdoc-LANGCODE-dir alias) as described in the CVS chapter of this HOWTO.
  • Copy en/language-defs.ent and en/language-snippets.ent to the new directory (visible as phpdoc/LANGCODE in your file system) and translate the contents of them.
  • Copy over files from the English tree and start to work on them, (do not check in untranslated files) and rerun configure each time you add a file. See the section about revision tracking for help about how can you ease your work of tracking the English version and your language's version.
  • After the translation makes a good start, its LANGCODE is added to the other PHP CVS modules like phpweb, livedocs, and to this howto. After doing so the new translation will be online!

Some important issues to consider when building a new translation:

  • Can you set up and translate the whole manual yourself? If not, can you set up a team to work on the language (recommended!)?
  • Have you made sure that your language or glyph (lettering, font, or characters) is supported by the DocBook stylesheets? Please ask on the mailing list if you don't know.

Working with the PHP Documentation