Installation Language

If you have users that do not speak English, you most likely want the installer of your application to display its messages and prompts in their native languages. Excelsior Installer has already been localized to Russian, French, German, Japanese, Polish, and Spanish. If you need support for other language, consider helping us with the translation of the installer's messages.

Participating

To begin, just write us an e-mail telling to what language(s) you would like to translate the installer, and we will add you to the respective group(s) of volunteers. There must be at least one native speaker in a group, otherwise the users may find the translated messages funny, confusing, or difficult to understand. Once we have two or more volunteers signed up for the given language, at least one of them being a native speaker, we will either send you the set of English messages to translate or the set of already translated messages for review.

What will you get...

...except the localized installer and a satisfaction of contributing to such a project? Well, we will put your name into a Hall of Fame. We have one right in the About box of the Packager.

How to translate

Download the msg.txt file, open it in Notepad or another text editor and replace each quoted message with the translated one. For example:

In English:

L_ENG + MSG_UNABLE_TO_CREATE_THREAD L"Fatal error: unable to create thread (error %d:%d)"

In Russian:

L_ENG + MSG_UNABLE_TO_CREATE_THREAD L"Фатальная ошибка: невозможно создать поток (код ошибки %d:%d)"

Please keep the formatting. The number and the order of format strings like %d or %s, should be the same after the translation! You can use the special symbols such as umlauts and mutations, if they are present in your language. When you finish, save the file and send it to us.

We shall then give your translation to other members of the respective group for review and possible correction. After the group agrees on the translation we will add it to the current installer code base and send the beta version to all members of the group for the final review and approval.

"Terms and conditions"

Word by word literal translation is highly undesirable. It would be much better to rewrite each message in a natural way for your language. Please don't use slang or audience-specific terms that will be difficult to understand by others.