# Create a Project

Now that you have the server running, you can setup a project to translate on the server.

## Our assumptions

To simplify the example we assume that:

- The project uses PO files.
- You can copy these files to the Pootle server.
- There is a template file in POT format containing the strings that need to be translated.
- The project follows the GNU layout (More information on this is provided below).
- Pootle is correctly set up and running.
- There is at least one rqworker thread running. This is important.
- You are logged into the Pootle server using your newly created administrator user.

## Adding a new project

### Placing translation files

You need to place the translation files for your new project in a location where Pootle can find, read and write them. Pootle uses the `POOTLE_TRANSLATION_DIRECTORY` setting to find out where translation files are stored on the server.

Our example project uses a GNU layout.

A GNU layout means that our project contains translation files named using language codes. Within the project there are no directories, just files. There can only be a single translation file per language in a project using this layout.

This is the simplest layout possible and the reason we are using it in our example.

Below you can see an example with two projects using the GNU layout:

    `-- translations
        `-- project1
        |   |-- de.po
        |   |-- fr.po
        |   |-- gl.po
        |   |-- pt_BR.po
        |   `-- templates.pot
        `-- project2
            |-- af.po
            |-- eu.po
            |-- pt_BR.po
            |-- templates.pot
            `-- zu.po

Among the regular translation files there are two files named `templates.pot`. These are the template (master or reference) files that contain the original strings. Usually these files contain only English strings, it is much less confusing to use the term `templates` than e.g. `en` or `English`.

To get started, create a `my-project` directory in the location pointed to by `POOTLE_TRANSLATION_DIRECTORY` and place within it the translation files for your new project. Make sure you have a `templates.pot` among those project translation files.

### Creating the project

At the top of the user interface, you will see your newly created administrator username. Click on it and the main top menu will be displayed, then click on Admin (highlighted in red):

Now you are in the administration interface. Go to the Projects tab and you will see a New Project button:

Click on that button and the Add Project form will be displayed. Enter the new project’s details. Code must match the name of the directory within `POOTLE_TRANSLATION_DIRECTORY` that contains the project translation files, in our example `my-project`. You can also provide a Full Name easily readable for humans. You don’t need to change the rest of the fields unless you need to further customize your project.

Once you are done click on the Save button below the form to create the project. Creating the project doesn’t actually import all the translations to Pootle. To do that you need to run `update_stores` on the command line of the Pootle server:

    $ pootle update_stores --project=my-project

This will import all the translations from disk into Pootle, calculate the translation statistics and calculate the quality check failures. This might take a while for a large project.

Looking at your new project you will see that Pootle has imported all the existing translations for the existing languages that you copied to the `my-project` directory within `POOTLE_TRANSLATION_DIRECTORY`.

## Enable translation to a new language

When you want to add a new language to the project, follow these steps.

Go to your project overview and select Languages in the navigation dropdown:

Note

Alternatively you can get the same result by clicking on the Languages link that is displayed below your project form in the administration interface:

The existing languages enabled for the project are listed. In our example we are adding Arabic to the project:

When you click the Save button the new language will be added for translation. In large projects it may take some time to create the new translation files from the `templates`.

Note

If you want to enable translation to a language that doesn’t yet exist in your Pootle instance, then you will first have to add the language in the Languages tab in the administration interface, in a similar way to creating a new project.

Once the language is created you can enable translation to that new language in any project by following the instructions above.

## Updating strings for existing project

Whenever developers introduce new strings, deprecate older ones, or change some of them this impacts Pootle and the languages being translated.

When any of these changes occur, you will need to generate a new `templates.pot` and use it to bring the translations in Pootle up-to-date with the new templates.

Once you have created the new `templates.pot` place it within your project’s directory in `POOTLE_TRANSLATION_DIRECTORY`, replacing the file with the same name. After that, invoke the following command which will update the template translations in the Pootle database.

    $ pootle update_stores --project=my-project --language=templates

This command will ensure that new strings are added to the project and any strings which have been removed are marked as deprecated, and thus will not be available for translation.

Now each of the languages will need to be brought into sync with the template language. The first step is to save all the Pootle translations to disk:

    $ pootle sync_stores --project=my-project

Then update all those translations on disk against the newer templates. We recommend you to update them on disk using the pot2po command line tool because it can handle other formats besides Gettext PO.

    $ cd $POOTLE_TRANSLATION_DIRECTORY  # Use the actual path!
    $ cd my-project
    $ pot2po -t af.po templates.pot af.po  # Repeat for each language by changing the language code.

Note

To preserve the existing translations we pass the previous translation file to the `-t` option.

When all the languages in the project have been updated you can push them back to Pootle:

    $ pootle update_stores --project=my-project

Note

If your project languages contain many translations you might want to perform the update against newer templates on a language by language basis.