Translation Instructions

Translating CSL Locale Files

The file names of the locale files are in the format "locales-xx-XX.xml", with "xx-XX" indicating the language tag. Locale files consist of XML, and can be edited with any text editor. If no file exists for your language of interest, you can use the US English "locales-en-US.xml" file as starting point.

Before continuing, we recommend that you take a look at the description of the XML structure of the CSL locale files described in the CSL specification.

Options

The localized option punctuation-in-quote has been set to "false" for all locales other than US English (en-US).

Dates

Dates have already been localized based on the localized date formats listed on Wikipedia. If you want to make changes, make sure to read the description of localized dates in the CSL specification. Pay attention to the use of delimiters, so that dates also display correctly if they consist of only a year and month, or of only a year.

Terms

Translating terms is relatively straightforward. Take for example the "month-01"-term:

<term name="month-01">January</term>

The name of this term is "month-01", and the text inside the term-element ("January") represents the English translation. For the Dutch CSL locale, this line is changed to:

<term name="month-01">januari</term>

Some terms are more complex. In some cases, singular and plural versions exist:

<term name="editor">
  <single>editor</single>
  <multiple>editors</multiple>
</term>

In other cases, terms exist in specific forms. E.g. the "editor" term occurs multiple times:

<term name="editor">
  <single>editor</single>
  <multiple>editors</multiple>
</term>
...
<term name="editor" form="short">
  <single>ed.</single>
  <multiple>eds.</multiple>
</term>
...
<term name="editor" form="verb">edited by</term>
...
<term name="editor" form="verb-short">ed.</term>

Verb forms (form="verb" or "verb-short") indicate that the term is a verb. Short forms (form="short" or "verb-short") indicate that the term is abbreviated.

The Use of Periods

In CSL 1.0 styles, periods can be easily removed from terms with the strip-periods attribute. Because of this, abbreviated terms in the locale files should include periods, if applicable (e.g. <term name="et-al">et al.</term> instead of <term name="et-al">et al</term>).

Submitting Locales

To submit new or modified locale files, please follow the instructions for submitting styles (locale files can also be validated against the CSL schema).