How-to: Translate plural forms for themes/plugins with PoEdit

As the title says: How would you translate…

• _n()
• _n_noop()
• _nc()
• _nx()
• _nx_noop()

…in your .mo files?

Step 1

Open your file in PoEdit.

Step 2

Go to “Catalogue” » “Settings“

Step 3

Fill in “Language” and “Country” ¹⁾.

Step 4

Fill “Pluralform” (last field).

// For 2 plural forms
nplurals=2; plural=n != 1;

// For 3 plural forms (for e.g. russian), use:
nplurals=3; plural=(n%10==1 && n%100!=11) ? 0 : ((n%10>=2 && n%10<=4 && (n%100<10 || n%100>=20)) ? 1 : 2);

// For 4 plural forms (for e.g. slovenian), use:
nplurals=4; plural=n%100==1 ? 0 : n%100==2 ? 1 : n%100==3 || n%100==4 ? 2 : 3;

Step 4

Go to the 3rd tab “Keywords“.

Add the following list. ²⁾ Of course you have to extend to 1,2,3 for languages with three different plural forms and so on.

_n:1,2
_n_noop:1,2
_nx:1,2
_nx_noop:1,2

Links

• This article from Mark Jaquith may be interesting.
• Heiko Rabe explains where very well how to work with translation files (german language). He also offers an interesting PDF.

Plugins

This Plugin by (again) Heiko Rabe does a pretty good job with helping translating your plugin.

Footnotes

^{1) For e.g. UK & U.S.A. have different forms of “colour/color”}

^{2) Every row goes in a single (new) entry.}