Pootle: a web translation and translation management engine

Web: <http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/pootle/index>
Bugzilla: <http://bugs.locamotion.org/>
Mailing List: <https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/translate-pootle>
IRC: #pootle on irc.freenode.org

How it works

Pootle can host a number of translation projects for a number of languages. It allows a team to manage their files, permissions, projects, and also allows for translation on-line. Files can be downloaded for offline translation and later uploaded again.

Pootle tries to lower the barrier of entry, but also provides tools to enable teams to work towards higher quality while welcoming newcomers.

Running

To run Pootle from sources, just run:

./PootleServer

After installation with setup.py, PootleServer should also be accessible from the installation.

If you are more familiar with Django projects, you can look into the manage.py commands as well.

Use --help to see the other options. The defaults will generally work.

Now visit http://localhost:8000/ to try out Pootle.

To stop the server, press Ctrl-C.

It is not recommended to run Pootle as the root user. For any non-trivial installation of Pootle, ensure that you use a database server (not SQLite) and use memcached. Other important information about optimisation is available in the Pootle documentation: <http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/pootle/optimisation>

Pootle can run under Apache using mod_python or mod_wsgi. Check this page for detailed instructions: <http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/pootle/apache>

Manual preparation

./manage.py syncdb

At this step, you will be asked to create a superuser. This user will be the administrator for your Pootle installation.
./manage.py initdb

This step fills the database with initial data needed to run Pootle.
./manage.py refresh_stats

Precalculate statistics and indexes for existing translation projects. This step is not strictly required, but without it Pootle will feel a bit sluggish and slow when visiting accessing a page for the first time.
./manage.py runserver

You can now visit your Pootle installation at http://localhost:8000. Note that the first time will take a few moments to load, since Pootle needs to pre-compute stats data for the translation files.

Notes

Files should be reindexed automatically. To ensure that all statistics and indices are up to date for the current projects and languages, run:

PootleServer --refreshstats

Assignments

Goals and assignments don't work at the moment, but should be re-instated soon.

Common problems

If you get an error such as sqlite3.OperationalError: unable to open database file then DATABASE_NAME in pootle/settings.py is pointing at an invalid directory. The default directory name is 'dbs' - ensure that this exists, and is writable for the user running Pootle.

Bug Reporting/Feature requests

You can always report bugs or feature requests on the mailing list but because of the increase in users and the fact that bug reports do go missing it is probably best to place your bug report in Bugzilla: http://bugs.locamotion.org/

If you have a traceback or a patch then please include it. Also please be quite specific about how the bug occurred and what you expected to happen.

If this is a feature request then try to be specific about how you think this feature should work.

julen / pootle