Localization? How to get started on PT8 ? (Sorry its probably a noob question)

Question

Hi,
I am starting to use Paratext to help with getting the Western Lawa Bible from a print only format into a digital format. (It was published in early 2000’s by the Thai Bible society).
This is a language that I don’t speak, (although I can speak a related language and can read a good amount of it with comprehension). The Western Lawa script is based on Thai and the local help will be fluent in Thai but very limited in English.
The plan is that they will read through the current version of the Bible and make sure it has survived the import from a legacy font intact. Then if there are any things that need to be cleaned up they will suggest those and their suggestions will be approved by one of the people who worked on the translation.

All that to say that I need to localize the interface into Thai for them to be able to do this. Unfortunately this isn’t one of the interface languages offered.
I have looked around the help and the FAQs and this supporter site but can’t seem to find how to actually do localization.
Can someone point me in the right direction?
Thanks
anon110449

Answer 1

To start a new localization, you can do the following inside Paratext:

1. Click on Tools > Advanced > Localization.
2. Click File > Add Language in the Localizer dialog and enter in the information for Thai
3. Click on the new language under the Language menu.
4. This will allow you to localize all the strings inside Paratext into Thai.
5. When you are ready, you can click on File > Export Current Language to save the localization to a file.

After this is done, other users can use that same dialog to import your file (File > Import Language) and they will be able to switch to using the Thai interface you have translated.

Alternately, you can copy the exported file to the user’s machines at C:\Users{UserName}\AppData\Local\Paratext80\LocData with the name of the Thai language code.

Please note that there are around 7,000 strings so you might prioritize the important ones first. You can search for “paratext.mainform” in the search box inside the Localizer dialog (in the upper-right) to do the main window first and then “paratext.textform” to do the scripture windows.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that File > Save exists in the Localizer dialog so you don’t have to constantly export to save your intermediate steps.

Answer 2

Thanks!
That was very helpful.
I just have a lot of work now trying to get it localized.
Cheers
anon110449