<page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/" xmlns:its="http://www.w3.org/2005/11/its" type="topic" style="task" id="dev-translate-setup" xml:lang="oc">

  <info>

    <link type="next" xref="dev-translate-build"/>

    <revision version="0.1" date="2013-06-19" status="review"/>

    <credit type="author copyright">

      <name>Michael Hill</name>

      <email its:translate="no">mdhillca@gmail.com</email>

      <years>2013</years>

    </credit>

    <include xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" href="cc-by-sa-3-0.xml"/>

    <desc/>

  </info>

  <title>Mark strings for translation</title>

  <links type="series" style="floatend">

    <title>Set up translations</title>

  </links>

  
Before the strings from your application can be translated, they need to

  be extracted from the source code.

  
Wrap messages or string literals in your code with the

  '_()' macro.

  <note>

    
For C, this macro is defined in the <file>glib/gi18n.h</file> header

    file, which must be included at the top of your application source.

  </note>

  
Your wrapped strings should look like this:

  _("Press a key to continue")

  
This marks the strings as translatable, and at runtime calls

  <app>gettext</app> to substitute the translated strings.

</page>