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Translating Nothing KDE Widgets

The widgets use KDE's standard i18n() translation system. All user-facing strings are already marked as translatable , you just need to provide the translations for your language.

How It Works

template.pot  →  your_language.po  →  compiled .mo  →  bundled in widget
  (source)        (you translate)      (build.sh)      (install.sh)
  1. Each widget has a template.pot file containing all translatable strings
  2. You copy it to create a .po file for your language (e.g., nl.po for Dutch)
  3. You translate the strings in the .po file
  4. build.sh compiles your translations into binary .mo files
  5. install.sh automatically bundles them into the widget when installing

Contributing a Translation

1. Pick a widget and copy the template

cd translate/<package>/
cp template.pot <language_code>.po

For example, to start a Dutch translation for the clock:

cd translate/clock-digital/
cp template.pot nl.po

Language codes follow the ISO 639-1 standard:

Language Code
Dutch nl
French fr
German de
Spanish es
Portuguese (Brazil) pt_BR
Japanese ja
Korean ko
Chinese (Simplified) zh_CN

2. Edit the .po file

Open the .po file in a translation editor:

  • Lokalize — KDE's translation tool (recommended)
  • Poedit — Cross-platform PO editor
  • Any text editor — PO files are plain text

Each entry looks like:

#: packages/date/contents/ui/config/ConfigGeneral.qml:16
msgid "Theme:"
msgstr ""

Fill in msgstr with your translation:

#: packages/date/contents/ui/config/ConfigGeneral.qml:16
msgid "Theme:"
msgstr "Thema:"

Also update the header at the top of the file:

  • Set Language: to your language code (e.g., nl)
  • Set Content-Type charset to UTF-8
  • Fill in Last-Translator with your name

3. Submit a Pull Request

Commit your .po file and open a PR. That's it — the maintainer handles the rest.

Available Widgets

Package Strings Template
battery 23 template.pot
clock-analog 13 template.pot
clock-digital 19 template.pot
clock-digital-large 24 template.pot
date 6 template.pot
media 6 template.pot
photo 33 template.pot
weather 19 template.pot

For Maintainers

Regenerate templates after changing strings

If you add or modify i18n() strings in QML files, regenerate the templates:

./translate/merge.sh

This updates all template.pot files and merges changes into any existing .po files.

Build and install translations

Translations are automatically compiled when you run install.sh. You can also build them manually:

./translate/build.sh

This compiles all .po files into .mo binaries and places them in:

packages/<widget>/contents/locale/<lang>/LC_MESSAGES/plasma_applet_<id>.mo

Requirements

The build scripts require gettext:

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install gettext

# Fedora
sudo dnf install gettext

# Arch
sudo pacman -S gettext