Here's how to translate OCCT in any language.

First, you need to download poEdit. It's a very small and well done app that will be used to actually do the translation.

It can be found here : poEdit Download Page

After the download, install it by double-clicking on it. Don't worry, it's really lightweight.

Next step is to actually get a feel on how things are done.

Open OCCT's directory. You will see a folder named "locale", with the following contents : (as you may have guessed by now, i am french, so the screens are in french. Don't worry, it's only windows explorer screens ;) ).

Each folder is a language. DE stands for "deutsch" => german. FR is french. And so on. You may have more folders that the ones currently showed : that's normal, more language are continuously added to OCCT.The file "default.po" is the file you'll have to work with later on :)

But for now, open a folder, for instance, let's open "FR". Go into the "LC_MESSAGES" folder, and you'll find 2 files :

  1. Default.mo : this is the file used by OCCT to get the french translation of OCCT
  2. French.po : this is the file containing the "human-readable" version of the french translation of OCCT

Double-click on French.po, and poEdit will open up. It will ask you to fill in your name and email (just fill your name, forget about the mail or just put some nonsense in there : no spam !), and the default language for poEdit. It will look like that :

  • every line in the UI is a word or sentence used in OCCT
  • A line in blue is an untranslated word
  • A line in white is a translated word
  • When you click on a line, the word will be shown below, and at the bottom, its translation

This should give you some clues about how to translate... it's as easy as it seems. Click on a line, type the translated word in the bottom left corner, click on another blue line, translate again... That's all there's to it !

You want to start translating ? Well, you're ready to go. Let me just give you a few advices :

  • Start with the file named default.po located in the "locale" directory. It's a blank file that you should start with
  • It isn't necessary to translate every word in the file. For instance, in french, we do use the word "CPU", as many others languages... no need to translate that ! Just leave the line in blue, OCCT will stick to the untranslated word
  • Try to be close in terms of word length. For instance, if you translate "System Information" with "Les informations de ton système en temps réel", there's a very strong chance that your translation won't be entirely displayed and be cut in OCCT. Sticking to about the same word length (count the letters, and try to be close, not exactly close) will save you some trouble. "Informations système" is a good translation in french for "System Information"
  • BE SURE TO SAVE YOUR WORK OFTEN !
  • You may get the following error :

If you do, it can be fixed easily : just go, in poEdit, in the "Catalog => Settings" menu, and replace "PACKAGE VERSION" with "OCCT". Close the Settings box, and save : woot, error gone.

Once you're done and happy with what you've done, it's time to try your translation in OCCT :) Yes, you can try it alone, it's as easy as copying a file.

Save your work, and poEdit will output 2 files : "default.po" and "default.mo", just as in the following picture :

Copy the "default.mo" file in the "FR\LC_MESSAGES" subdirectory. Just as in the following picture. Don't worry, overwrite the existing "default.mo" file :

Next, run OCCT, and go into the settings. Choose the "French" language. Woot, OCCT is using your translation file ! It will believe it to be the french language, but that doesn't matter, that's just because we used the "FR" subdirectory.

Now, check if everything is fine : just check that no word is too long and not displayed correctly in OCCT interface, see that everything is ok. Generate a graph (ideally, at least a temperature and a voltage graph, you can run a quick 6 minutes custom test), and check that everything is fine.

Once you're done with it and happy, you just have to send me the file you produced :)

For that, just send me a mail : iench 'at' ocbase 'dot' com, with the following information :

  • Your name (as you want it to appear in the "thanks" part of OCCT
  • The language you've translated OCCT into (french, italian, german,...)
  • How do you write the name of your language in your language (français, italiano, deutsch...). For instance, "French" is written "Français" in French. That's important and will be used in OCCT's dropdown box to identify the language :)
  • The default.po and default.mo file you worked on

And that's it, you're done ! If you reached that point in the explanation, congrats, and thanks for your help in translating OCCT :)