## Internationalization

BORG supports Locales (regional settings) as of release 1.3. The Locale can be switched from the Options screen. Once a new Locale is chosen, a restart is required before the new Locale is used. The date formats, month names, and weekday names are supported for all Locales listed. However, the majority of text strings in BORG come from properties files.

Except for this Help and some README files, BORG supports many languages. Translations to other languages would only require a translated version of the borg_resource.properties file that comes in the BORG jar file.

During development, new strings are added to the program. However, the translations are not updated by the main developer. Therefore, some new text may appear in English for the various locales until new translations are provided to the developer.

Here are instructions on how to provide a new translation:

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To change the text strings in BORG, you have to understand a little about the borg.jar file. A jar (Java archive) file is just a regular ZIP archive with some extra java related items in it. The borg.jar file can be unzipped using any tool that works on ZIP files, or using the jar tool that comes with the Java SDK.

If you unzip the borg.jar file, you will find that it contains a number of folders – i.e. net, META-INF, and resource. All of the files containing the BORG text strings are in the resource folder. By editing files in the resource folder and then re-zipping the borg.jar file, you can change the strings shown by the GUI.

There are 3 different categories of text strings shown in BORG:

### 1. Strings that come from the Java Runtime

These are the Month and Day names. These strings always appear in the language associated with the locale that is set in the Appearance tab of the preferences window. Nothing has to be done to translate these strings.

Just set a new locale, restart BORG, and you should see translated month and day names.

### 2. Strings that come from Resource Bundles

These include all of the GUI labels, table headers, button text, and menu text except for the month and day names. These come from a resource bundle called borg_resource. Resource bundles are a standard way that Java uses to find properties for a given locale.

When you set a locale in BORG, you are setting 2 data items used by Java - the country and language. Java has a 2 character code for each of these.

These codes can be found here: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/intl/locale.doc.html

When BORG needs to display a text string, it first looks for the string in a file called borg_resource_ll_cc.properties, where ll is the language and cc is the country code. For example, the file borg_resource_fe_CA is used first if the locale is set to French/Canada.If the given property is not found in the file, or the file does not exist, BORG will look for a file of the form borg_resource_ll.properties. Finally, the default file, borg_resource.properties is used. This default file is guaranteed to have all of the required strings. This search algorithm is standard for Java.

*** To create a new translation: ***

1. unzip borg.jar

2. go to the resource folder. make a copy of borg_resources.properties and name it according to the locale you will use.

3. For each string, replace the value on the right side of the equals (=) with the translated string. Do not touch the value to the left of the equals.

4. re-zip borg.jar

*** To change an existing translation: ***

1. unzip borg.jar

2. edit the resource file that you want to change

3. re-zip the file

### 3. Strings that come from regular text or html files inside borg.jar

These include the Help text, README, License, and CHANGES text.

These come from regular text or html files in the resource directory. There is currently no support in BORG to show different versions of these files based on locale. If you want to change them, just edit them.

If you want to send me your translated properties file so that I can include it in the next release, email it to me at i_flem@users.sourceforge.net