Translate a PO (gettext) file into Portuguese

Brazil or Portugal: decide before you upload

Manuce treats Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese as two separate languages. In a user interface the gap is not a handful of words; it hits the most visible labels.

• msgid "Save file" becomes Salvar arquivo in Brazil and Guardar ficheiro in Portugal.
• Download: Baixar vs Transferir; Password: Senha vs Palavra-passe; Screen: Tela vs Ecrã; User: Usuário vs Utilizador.
• Addressing the user: Brazil uses você with third-person verbs; in Portugal tu feels too familiar for software, so interfaces lean on the polite imperative or impersonal phrasing (Introduza a palavra-passe).

If your app targets both markets, plan two files, for example pt_BR.po and pt_PT.po; ordering both languages together brings a 20% discount on the whole order. A single generic "pt" file will always read as foreign on one side of the Atlantic.

What Portuguese changes in gettext strings

Plurals. CLDR lists three categories for Portuguese (one, many, other), but many only covers large numbers in compact notation (1 milhão de…); in a gettext file Portuguese is written in practice with two forms, msgstr[0] and msgstr[1]. The catch is zero: the usual Brazilian rule, plural=(n > 1), treats 0 as singular, while the European rule, plural=(n != 1), treats it as plural. "0 arquivo" on one side, "0 ficheiros" on the other.

Gender. "%s was deleted" becomes %s foi excluído or %s foi excluída depending on whether %s stands for o arquivo or a pasta. With no hint, the translation has to pick one; a msgctxt or a #. comment naming the object steers the choice.

Contractions. Portuguese merges prepositions and articles: de + o = do, em + a = na. "Settings of %s" will need Configurações do %s or da %s depending on the inserted word, which no translation can guess. Such concatenations are best rewritten as full sentences in the code.

Length and typography. Portuguese often runs longer than English (Settings → Configurações), so watch buttons and tabs. No space before colons or question marks (unlike French), and a decimal comma. Accented letters (ç, ã, õ, ê) need a UTF-8 file with a matching charset in the Content-Type header.

What Manuce returns, and what it does not do

• The same file in the same format: indentation, entry order, quotes, comments, line endings, encoding and BOM preserved; only the values change.
• A .pot template comes back as a Portuguese .po, with the Language and Plural-Forms headers set and as many msgstr[n] as the language needs.
• msgctxt, msgid_plural and #., #:, #, comments kept; context guides the translation: "Open" with msgctxt "verb" gives Abrir, with msgctxt "status" rather Aberto.
• printf variables checked: "Page %1$d of %2$d" must keep both variables in Página %1$d de %2$d.
• Every translated value is compared with the source (variables, tags); if a mismatch persists, the source value is kept and the report says so.
• A report: strings translated, strings left as they were and why.

Not translated: keys, empty values, URLs, email addresses, numbers, colours, date formats, identifiers and anything marked as non-translatable. A format such as %m/%d/%Y therefore stays as it is; switching to the day/month/year order used in both Brazil and Portugal is up to you. You get the .po back; compiling the .mo remains on your side. Manuce does not take glossaries or translation memories and does not provide sworn or certified translation. Pricing counts the words in values only, keys and tags excluded.

Preparing the file and checking the Portuguese .po

Before uploading:

• Start from an up-to-date .pot, regenerated after your latest code changes, or from an existing .po to complete.
• Add #. comments wherever a word's gender or role is ambiguous: #. %s is a folder name is enough to point towards excluída.
• For a product or command name that must stay in English, check the free sample, then the delivered translation.

After delivery:

• Check the Language header: it must match what your loader expects (pt_BR, pt_PT or pt).
• Run msgfmt --check: it flags an incomplete header, an inconsistent number of msgstr[n] or a broken c-format string.
• Test the interface with n = 0, 1 and 2 to confirm the plural rule of your chosen variant.
• Read the report: a string left in the source language often points to a malformed variable in the original.
• Look at short labels in the running interface, where Portuguese tends to overflow.

In practice

1. Upload your .po or .pot file and choose Brazilian or European Portuguese.
2. Read the free sample: variant vocabulary, form of address, terms that should stay unchanged.
3. Accept the quote, based on the words in the values, and pay.
4. Download the .po and the report, run msgfmt --check and test plurals with 0, 1 and 2.