Translate a PO (gettext) file into German

What German changes in a .po file

German has two CLDR plural categories, one and other, so each plural entry needs msgstr[0] and msgstr[1]. The expected header is Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=(n != 1);. Coming from English this looks familiar, and zero is plural in both: "0 files", 0 Dateien. The trap is source languages such as French, where zero is singular: any hand-written n > 1 test in your code will produce wrong German for zero. Use ngettext() throughout.

• msgid "%d file" / msgid_plural "%d files" becomes msgstr[0] "%d Datei" and msgstr[1] "%d Dateien".
• Every noun is capitalised, but there is no English-style title case: "Save As" becomes Speichern unter.
• Compounds lengthen labels: "Account settings" becomes Kontoeinstellungen, one word that cannot wrap without hyphenation. Expect German text to run 20 to 35% longer than English.
• Professional software addresses users with formal Sie, with a capitalised possessive: Speichern Sie Ihre Änderungen.

Variables, word order and context

German puts the infinitive verb at the end of a short label: "Delete %s?" becomes "%s löschen?". With one variable that is harmless. With two, German sentence order may reverse them, so strings written with positional arguments, %1$s and %2$s, let the translation reorder values safely, for example "%1$s hat %2$s eingeladen".

Manuce checks that every variable in the source (%s, %d, %1$s) is present in the German value. msgctxt resolves ambiguities that English hides and German does not: "Open" with context status gives Offen, with context action gives Öffnen. Extracted comments #. and references #: are read and kept.

German typography uses „…“ quotation marks. Inside a .po they need no escaping, unlike the straight quote \", but they do not exist in ISO-8859-1: UTF-8 is the only safe encoding.

What Manuce returns, and what it does not do

You receive the same file in the same format:

• A .pot comes back as a German .po, with Language: de and Plural-Forms headers set.
• The number of msgstr[n] entries matches German: two.
• msgctxt, msgid_plural and #., #:, #, comments are kept, as are entry order, quoting, line endings, encoding and BOM. Only the values change.
• Each translated value is compared with the source (variables, tags). If a mismatch persists, the source value is kept and the report says so.
• The report lists translated strings and those left unchanged, with the reason.

Not translated: keys, empty values, URLs, email addresses, numbers, colours, date formats, identifiers and anything marked as non-translatable. In practice a msgid "m/d/Y" stays as it is; if you want the German d.m.Y, set it yourself. Manuce does not compile the .mo, does not adjust your layout for longer labels and does not take glossaries or terminology instructions. The target is German (de): for Switzerland, where ß is written ss, review it yourself.

Preparing the file and checking the result

Before uploading:

• Save the file as UTF-8 and declare charset=UTF-8 in the header, for umlauts, ß and German quotation marks.
• Add msgctxt to short ambiguous words ("Open", "Post", "Share") and #. comments saying where the string appears.
• Switch strings with several variables to positional arguments.

The quote counts the words in the values, keys and tags excluded. The free excerpt, one paragraph translated at your chosen level, lets you check the Sie register and how product names are handled before paying; for a published interface, the Professional level is the sensible choice.

After delivery:

1. Run msgfmt --check -o de.mo de.po: it validates the header and printf format consistency.
2. Look for entries still flagged #, fuzzy: msgfmt skips them by default, so they would display in the source language.
3. Open the interface in German and look for clipped buttons; CSS hyphens: auto with lang="de" helps with long compounds.

In practice

1. Save your .po or .pot as UTF-8, with msgctxt and #. comments on ambiguous strings.
2. Upload the file: the quote appears at once, based on the words in the values.
3. Read the free excerpt to check the Sie register and terms that must stay unchanged.
4. Download the de.po and the report, then run msgfmt --check before testing the interface.