Current Status of Internationalization

The University of Patras in Greece have done the initial hard work of separating out text from the JSPs into a dictionary file and linking to it. MARTON Jozsef has build on this by parameterising the UI text.

Since revision 1951 of SVN the i18n multilingualism patch is part of DSpace code base. This enables the DSpace instance to support more than one language.

Language packs now stored and managed in SVN

The language packs (messages files) contributed by the community are available at Sourceforge. The dspace project including the latest language-packs can be checked out through SVN with the following instruction set:

svn co https://dspace.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/dspace language-packs 

The language-packs are also available in the download section at SourceForge

Other language related files, like help pages, input forms, email templates and so on are still kept here.

If you supply new translations, make sure, they correspond to a stable release of DSpace and do not contain English tags nor references to your DSpace instance (e.g. name of your Institution). In partially translated Messages_xx.properties, just omit the untranslated tags. Messages.properties will be used as a fallback anyway and untranslated tags are easiear detectable with tools like the Ecliplse Resource Bundle Editor if omitted.

Here is a list of new tags from DSpace 1.4.2 to DSpace 1.5 NewTags142To15.txt so you might easily update an existing translation.

Translation work in progress

If you are in the progress of translating or upgrading existing translations, please communicate your efforts here and in the dspace lists to avoid redundant work and get feedback on your translations. The more hands join in the tedious work of translation the better.

Available translations of Messages.properties for JSP-UI

Available translations of messages.xml for XML-UI

Parts of localizations not yet managed at Sourceforge SVN

Messages.properties not corresponding to a valid Locale

Other parts of DSpace which can be translated

DSpace 1.6.0

• Set of localized files for Ukrainian

DSpace 1.5.2

• Set of localized files for Ukrainian

DSpace 1.5.1

• Set of localized file for Japanese
• Set of localized file for Spanish

DSpace 1.4.2

Misc resources not part of DSpace

Basic Technical Considerations

The Java Standard Tag Library v1.0 is used.

The Use of Tags and Message Keys

Basic steps for using Tags in a JSP:

• include the Standard Tag Library in the JSP -

  <%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/fmt" prefix="fmt" %>

• define the key you want in config/Messages.properties
• use the key instead of the text in the JSP, see examples below
  The messages may can now be changed in the appropriate config/Messages_xx.properties file. This must be done at build-time, because it is placed in the dspace.war.

  Example: Basic key use

• Old JSP

  <h1>Search Results</h1>

• New JSP

  <h1><fmt:message key="jsp.search.results.title" /></h1>

• Messages.properties

  jsp.search.results.title = Search Results

Example: Use of parameters

Phrases may have parameters to be passed in, to make the job of translating easier, reduce the number of 'keys' and to allow translators to make the translated text flow more appropriately for the target language.

• Old JSP

  <p>Results <%= r.getFirst() %> to <%= r.getLast() %> of <%= r.getTotal() %></p>

• New JSP

<p>jsp.search.results.text = Results \{0\}-\{1\} of \{2\}</p>

(Note: JSTL 1.0 does not seem to allow JSP <%= %> expressions to be passed in as values of attribute in <fmt:param value=""/>)

To Do

• In the servlet code:
  • In `AuthorizeAdminServlet`, some English is passed for direct display in the title through the attribute `edit_title`. E.g. "Item".
• `config/dstat.map`
• Support for easy customisation of UI without needing to fork language bundles.
• Display dates, numbers etc. according to Locale. (JSTL has tags for this)
• Searching in non-Western languages such as Chinese; Lucene cannot parse/separate words
• Multi-lingual metadata. Submission forms do not include language info for metadata. (The "language" DC field relates to the language of the content, i.e. the bitstreams.)
  • <b>HPCLab, University of Patras, has submitted a new patch addressing this issue, against 1.4.2 (including the I18N patch) here. Please test and verify in order to remove from to-do.</b>
• Author and title ordering.
• Browse controls ("Jump to" 0-9, A-Z) – support for other characters
• Use of Collator fixes non-English language sort order problems. Not developed but small. No schema changes. JimDowning
• i18n of non-Web UI – e.g. command line tools like the import/export tools. Currently the dictionaries are only stored in the .war file, so other parts of code won't have access to them.

Useful Tools

Perl Script for unused keys

Here's a useful Perl script that finds all of the dictionary keys in the JSPs and the `Messages.properties` file, and prints out keys that are used in the JSPs but aren't in the dictionary, and vice versa. find-unused-keys.pl
Note: slightly out of date, can't detect message keys used in e.g. `LocaleSupport.getLocalizedMessage()`
You'll need to change the variables at the top of the file to point to your DSpace source dir.

Eclipse Resource Bundle Editor

The Eclipse Resource Bundle Editor is a usefull tool to create and manage Messages.properties files. It is an "Eclipse plugin for editing Java resource bundles. Lets you manage all localized properties files in one screen. Some features: sorted keys, warning icons on missing keys/values, conversion to/from Unicode, hierarchical view of keys, more..."

Original University of Patras I18N set of patches

In case these may be useful to someone, here is the original set of patches that enable I18N support developed at the High Performance Information Systems Laboratory (HPCLab), University of Patras. Please keep in mind that these patches have been tested and work only with DSpace 1.2 version.

• multi_patch.txt This is the patch for JSP files, that has been included with 1.3a
• multi_patch_src.txt This is the patch for source code, that enables more I18N features
• tld_diff.txt This is the patch for the dspace-tags.tld, needed for multilingual item viewing
• Messages.properties Original University of Patras Messages.properties (en)
• months_en.java List resource bundle to be included under dspace src directory
• README.txt A very basic readme