Translating SKlauncher

Thank you in taking interest in translating SKlauncher! This project is translated by people who are kind enough to help us out with our localization files. You can help too and as a thank you will be listed in the about section in the launcher settings along with the other translators and contributors!

What NOT to do when translating

• Do not just blindly copy and paste translations from Google Translate, Deepl etc., these can be inaccurate.
• Do not make changes that you don't think are necessary. We get that you want to brag to your friends that your nickname can be found in the launcher, but please. Don't. New strings will eventually appear, and you will have the opportunity to help us out and be listed in the about section.
• Try to stick as close to the original string as possible. For example do not translate Uhoh! It looks like the game has crashed. Sorry for the inconvenience :( to Oh no! Game has crashed! equivalent in your language.
• Do not add any extra dots, commas, exclamation marks to the end of the string if the original one doesn't have one.

How to get started

Before you start translating, you need to check if your language is already translated. You can do this by going to SKlauncher's translations repository and checking if there is a file with your language code in it. If there is, you can help us out by checking if the translation is up-to-date and if there are any new strings that need to be translated. If you can't find your language, you can create a new translation. More about it below.

All you need is a GitHub account to contribute to the translations. If you don't have one, you can create one here.

Once you have a GitHub account, you can navigate to SKlauncher's translations repository and look for the language you are interested in.

Creating a new translation

To create a new translation, you need to create a new file in the SKlauncher's translations repository, and name it sklmessages_XX_XX.properties where XX_XX is your language code.

To find your language code, you can use this website to find your language and then look for the language code in the table in column ISO 639-3.

For instance if you want to translate SKlauncher to Silesian then create a file called sklmessages_szl_PL.properties.

After you create a new file and name it correctly, you can start translating. To start translating, you need to copy the contents of the English translation file and paste it into your new file. Then you can start translating like in the example below.

-lang.name=English
-lang.code=en_US
+lang.name=Ślōnskŏ gŏdka
+lang.code=szl_PL

Editing the existing translation

If the language you want to translate the launcher to is already there, then you can just edit the existing file. To do that, navigate to the file you want to edit and click on the Edit button.

You just change the part after = sign and that's pretty much it.

When you are done, scroll down to the bottom of the page where you can add a commit message and click on the Commit changes button. Don't worry if your translation is not perfect, we will review it and make sure it's good to go.

How to submit your translation

To submit your translation, you need to create a pull request. To do that, navigate to the SKlauncher's translations repository and click on the Pull requests tab. Then click on the New pull request button in the top right corner. You will be redirected to a page where you can choose the branch you want to merge your changes into. Choose main as a base, and your branch as a compare. Then add a title and a description to your pull request and click on the Create pull request button.

Now you have successfully submitted your changes to the launcher, and we will review them and merge them into the launcher if they are good to go. Review process takes about 1-2 days, but it can take less than that. Please check your e-mail (or GitHub notifications) once in a while to see if we have any questions or comments about your translation.