[SOLVED] Mac application menu items not translated

[janfaroe]

Hi all,

I'm having problems localizing the Application menu items on Mac OS. The rest of the application translates just fine, the application menu is translated when I launch the application from Qt Creator, but when the application is "on its own" after running macdeployqt on a release bundle, it's reverted to the original language (english).

I've added the necessary directories/files within the bundle:

@<bundle dir>/Contents
Resources
da.lproj
locversion.plist@

(in this case for Danish), where locversion.plist contains

@<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>LprojCompatibleVersion</key>
<string>123</string>
<key>LprojLocale</key>
<string>da</string>
<key>LprojRevisionLevel</key>
<string>1</string>
<key>LprojVersion</key>
<string>123</string>
</dict>
</plist>@

Even though this may not be necessary(?), I've added strings like this in my application as a desperate resort:

@QCoreApplication::translate("Mac Application Menu", "Services");
QCoreApplication::translate("Mac Application Menu", "Hide %1");@

and translated them of course. Still, no Danish application menu. What is the secret of this seemingly black art? Looking around the net, it seems like others are struggling too.

[janfaroe]

Really? :-(

[h0r4r]

Hi,
try e.g. this:
http://qt-project.org/forums/viewthread/21134

[janfaroe]

Thanks for the suggestion, however, I already came across that thread, and did as suggested (although programmatically):

QCoreApplication::translate("Mac Application Menu", "Services");
QCoreApplication::translate("Mac Application Menu", "Hide %1");
....

These strings do show up in the .ts files when running lupdate.

[SGaist]

Hi,

Can you provide a sample project that reproduce the behavior ?

[bootchk]

But doesn't QCA.translate() return the translation for the given string? What good does it do your program, since Qt is building the menu, on behalf of your app? Oh, I see, you just want to force the translation into your .ts files.

I would guess that your programmatic translation doesn't work because you misspelled the context, which is something like MAC_APPLICATION_MENU in the Qt code. So if you use that exact context in your code snippet, run lupdate, use linguist to translate, etc. and your app installs a translator for the resulting .qm file, then the Qt library, when building the mac app menu and using that context, will find your translations.

I could be wrong, and I am struggling too.

[janfaroe]

bootchk: Thanks for your input - it does indeed work when changing the context string to "MAC_APPLICATION_MENU"! I didn't put too much importance in the context name, but it's obviously necessary in this case.

Thanks!

[bootchk]

Great. Ideally, one would not need this hack, but instead contribute a translation to the Qt project. (I haven't done it myself, but it would be something like this: enroll as a Qt contributor, clone the latest source repository, run linguist on qttranslations/qt_da.ts and translate the strings for the main menu context, and submit a patch.)

I learned that Qt project relies on third parties to contribute translations. In my case 'Undo %1' is untranslated in qt_es.ts (Spanish) for at least a year. I hope Qt is recovering and getting more traction now.