Creating Foreign Language Versions of ACID

Since version 1.06, ACID can load all the screen text (titles, labels on buttons, messages etc) from a text file when it starts up. This makes it possible to produce a French, German or other language version.

This web-page explains what has to be done to make such versions available. In essence two things have to happen for each language:

  1. someone (not me) has to translate the messages (and the text of a webpage) and send the translations to me
  2. I will then build the appropriate web-page with the modified ACID and message file and host it

To assist translators, I've put together a translation kit. The kit contains:

You'll just need a simple text editor (such as Windows Notepad or OSX TextEdit) to create translated versions. Here's what you have to do.

Step 1 - Translating the Messages

The message file that ACID can load during start-up consist of 49 lines of the form: 

   keyword="string of text"

The 'default' set of English messages (which is called "uk.properties") is included in the translation pack. You can see these 51 text strings here.

Your first step consists of translating these messages into the desired language. I suggest you name the resulting file "xx.properties", where "xx" is a short name for the language into which you have translated the messages (e.g. 'fr.properties" for French or "de.properties" for German).

Step 2 - Testing the Translation

First, you have to download the latest version of ACID (1.06). To make it use the message file you have produced, you have to tell ACID to load it by editing the acid.properties file (with Notepad or any text editor). Add the line: 

langfile=xx.properties

to the file, where 'xx.properties' is the name you gave to your translated file. Then start up Acid. You should see your translations instead of the normal English text. You'll need to try it out by dropping photos on it and clicking the buttons to make sure all the translations look OK.

If there is no "langfile=..." entry in the acid.properties file, then ACID uses built-in default (English) messages, which are the same as those in the "uk.properties" file.

Step 3 - Translating the ACID Webpage

So that a non-English speaker can understand how to download and use ACID, they will need to view a webpage in their language. I'm happy to host such a page, but I can't produce it myself. So as well as translating the messages you will also need to produce a translated version of the ACID webpage (the text of the English version, "ukpage.txt", is in the translation kit). The translated page should be named "xxpage.txt" where "xx" is the short name you used for the properties file.

Like the English ACID page, the translated webpage will include a clickable image of ACID that pops up help messages about each field. These need to be translated too, so the translation kit includes the English version, "ukhelp.txt". The translated help should be named "xxhelp.txt" where "xx" is the short name you used for the properties file.

You can see the English webpage here, but note that you don't need to produce html files. I just need the translated versions of the two text files so that I can build the html.

Step 4 - Send the three translated files to me

Simply produce a zipfile containing the three translated files and email them to me. I will then build the necessary webpage pointing to a zipfile containing ACID and the translated messages file for that language.

Step 5 - Testing the new Webpage

When I've built the webpage, I'll ask you test check it out. Assuming it's OK, we can then publish the link to the page.

If you'd like to help, send a message to Dave@zenoshrdlu.com, so I know what you're doing, download the translation kit and get to work!