Gettext .po
The .po file format, short for Portable Object, is a form of text file used in software development to translate interface text. Originating from the GNU Gettext localization method, this open-source standard is widely used to make applications available in multiple languages. In the .po file, each original text string and its translation are grouped to aid in the automated translation of software content.
For .po files, Tolgee fully supports the plurals and uses extracted comments as the key descriptions. To read more about
the .po file format, you can visit the GNU Gettext documentation.
You can export and import Gettext (.po) files in message and placeholder formats listed below.
Read more about message & placeholder formats here.
Example of a .po file
msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Project-Id-Version: Tolgee 1.0.1\n"
"Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: report@example.com \n"
"Language: de\n"
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n"
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=(n != 1);\n"
#. This is a welcome message
msgid "Hello, world!"
msgstr "Hallo, Welt!"
msgid "%d page read."
msgid_plural "%d pages read."
msgstr[0] "Eine Seite gelesen wurde."
msgstr[1] "%d Seiten gelesen wurden."
Tolgee converts the placeholders to the Tolgee Universal ICU placeholders when enabled.
Feature support
Tolgee supports importing of basic msgid and msgstr fields, the plural msgid_plural and msgstr[..] arrays and it
imports the extracted comments (#.) as the key descriptions. No other fields are supported.
The message format and placeholder conversion
When importing data to Tolgee from the Gettext (.po) files, you can either enable or disable the conversion to the Tolgee Universal ICU placeholders. The conversion is enabled by default. You can also disable the conversion globally in the project settings. We recommend keeping the conversion enabled, as it brings many benefits. Read more about the benefits of Tolgee Universal ICU placeholders.
When the conversion is disabled, the original placeholders (e.g., %s, %d). are preserved. The message format is automatically detected when importing data in Gettext (.po) format. When exporting, you can choose from message & placeholder formats listed above.
Exporting
When exporting the data back to the .po file, the placeholders are converted back to the original format.
Plural import and msgid_plural field
When importing the .po file, Tolgee always imports the msgid as the key. When msgid_plural is present, Tolgee
imports the field as a _poFileMsgIdPlural custom value, so it is able to export the plural of the
the same way it was imported.
To see the imported metadata, open the Key Edit dialog by clicking the key name in the Tolgee platform and go to
Custom Values tab.
Read more about Custom Values here.
Importing / Exporting in general
To read more about importing and exporting with Tolgee, continue to import section or export section.