I just switched my N900 to French language to test out the Gettext support for my MSCIM switcher applet. I was surprised to see how many popular apps seem to be lacking translations, or are only partially translated.

Using GNU Gettext it's actually really easy to localise your app. You mark the translateable strings like this:

print _('Some text to translate')

...in your code, then run the xgettext utility to create the dictionary template file (.pot), which you then email to translators.

You will need to link in the gettext library/module for your language of choice, for which simple instructions are a Google away.

Meanwhile your translators will simply translate your strings by editing the file by hand or with one of several multi-platform GUI tools, and then send you back the result. A single pass with the msgfmt command and you have the compiled catalog (.mo) file, which you place in /usr/share/locale/LL or LL_CC (LL = 2-digit ISO language abbreviation, CC = 2-digit ISO country code).

You could even just include a .po file with your app and solicit translations from anonymous users with no prior arrangement, although assigning translators is preferable.

Here's a list of examples of applications by translation status, based on what I have installed:

No translations:

• Ansel-A
• BatteryGraph
• Bless N900
• Classic Cam
• Conboy personal wiki
• Countdown Timer
• Cutetube
• kmPlayer
• Mappero
• Mobile Hotspot
• MyDicto
• PyGTKeditor
• QStarDict
• Quiver Image Viewer
• Rockbox
• Search Tool
• Someplayer
• SunVox
• Symfonie

Partial translations:

• Countdown Home - .mo files are supplied for many languages but were not used on my N900. Some text can be changed by editing the .ini file. *
• GPE Todo - again, .mo files supplied but perhaps not used? *
• MSCIMswitcherstatus (only French and Chinese Simplified translations so far) **

* This may be due to porting from an earlier version of Maemo.
** This is my app, and I only added Gettext support yesterday, which took all of 2 hours.

Good translations:

• Abiword
• FBReader
• Grsync
• miniGnumeric
• MStarDict (could use more languages)
• Sleepanalyser
• SMplayer
• StrokeOrder