How to translate default qsTr fields - e.g. MessageDialog Yes / No buttons

Question

I have a small app that uses a Qt Quick MessageDialog. I created translations files with command

lupdate-qt5 ../myapp.pro .

In myapp.pro I indicated:

lupdate_only {
    SOURCES +=  $$PWD/ui/*.qml
}

and

TRANSLATIONS += \
   translations/i18n_nl.ts translations/i18n_fr.ts translations/i18n_en.ts

All translations are generated correctly. But I have no idea how to generate translations for the standard buttons that MessageDialog provides. In the following example the translations for "Warning" and "Please select Yes or No" are generated. But I can't get them generated for "Yes" and "No" (which is the text value of the StandardButtons property)

MessageDialog {
    title: qsTr("Warning")
    text: qsTr("Please select Yes or No")
    icon: StandardIcon.Warning
    standardButtons: StandardButton.Yes | StandardButton.No
    //.....
}

I have checked the source code and it indicates that they should be translated:

Button {
    id: yesButton
    text: qsTr("Yes")
    onClicked: root.click(StandardButton.Yes)
    visible: root.standardButtons & StandardButton.Yes
}

I've also tried manually adding an entry Yes and No but that doesn't seem to help.

I've found an issue on stackoverflow that talks about adding the qml file to the .pro file to make it work, and that is something I already do. I though about adding the built-in MessageDialog, but I have no idea how to do this.

As a final note: I know that in Qt 5.3 the qsTr's weren't in MessageDialog. But starting from Qt 5.4 they are. I am currently on Qt 5.5

Any help is greatly appreciated.

EDIT

After posting this I kept looking and found an interesting post of someone who has had the same issue. Unfortunately, no answer there.

EDIT 2

Thank you tynn for the response. I have tried both suggestions but no succes. I did try something else as well. I added a qDebug in my code to see if it would translate. I was hoping the same translation would then be used for the MessageDialog, but unfortunatly that doesn't seem to be the case.

qDebug() << "Translate yes :" << tr("Yes"); //translates correctly, dialog doesn't

I have also tried to build a dialog from scratch that does the same as the built-in messagedialog, but at the moment my knowledge of qml is too limited to get this working.

I have the same issue, did found a solution since asking the question? — user1403333, Feb 10 '17 at 01:04

Oleg Derevenetz · Answer 1 · 2019-03-19T19:32:58.230

Well, it may be a bit tricky.

First of all, localized strings for Qt widgets may be in Qt's .qm files. Remember that in general you will need all Qt's .qm files for locales you translate into. That's because Qt may, for example, use native MessageDialogs on platforms where they are available, and related code in this case will be located in qtbase, so you will need not only qtquickcontrols_XX.qm files, but also qtbase_XX.qm files for selected locales. And so on.

However, there may be cases when the above does not help. Required strings may simply be missing in the Qt's localization files for your locale (it's a quite common), so you will need to make .ts and .qm files for these strings by yourself. In this case you will need to study Qt sources in order to understand internals of those widgets you are interested in.

Please note that the following example depends on implementation details which may change in future Qt versions.

For example, Qt implementation of QML MessageDialog for Android and iOS uses QPlatformTheme that may be further subclassed to work with different platforms. In QPlatformTheme texts for button labels are returned by defaultStandardButtonText() method which looks like this:

QString QPlatformTheme::defaultStandardButtonText(int button)
{
    switch (button) {
    case QPlatformDialogHelper::Ok:
        return QCoreApplication::translate("QPlatformTheme", "OK");
    case QPlatformDialogHelper::Save:
        return QCoreApplication::translate("QPlatformTheme", "Save");
    case QPlatformDialogHelper::SaveAll:
        return QCoreApplication::translate("QPlatformTheme", "Save All");
    case QPlatformDialogHelper::Open:
        return QCoreApplication::translate("QPlatformTheme", "Open");
    case QPlatformDialogHelper::Yes:
        return QCoreApplication::translate("QPlatformTheme", "&Yes");
    case QPlatformDialogHelper::YesToAll:
        return QCoreApplication::translate("QPlatformTheme", "Yes to &All");
    case QPlatformDialogHelper::No:
        return QCoreApplication::translate("QPlatformTheme", "&No");
    case QPlatformDialogHelper::NoToAll:
        return QCoreApplication::translate("QPlatformTheme", "N&o to All");
    case QPlatformDialogHelper::Abort:
        return QCoreApplication::translate("QPlatformTheme", "Abort");
    case QPlatformDialogHelper::Retry:
        return QCoreApplication::translate("QPlatformTheme", "Retry");
    case QPlatformDialogHelper::Ignore:
        return QCoreApplication::translate("QPlatformTheme", "Ignore");
    case QPlatformDialogHelper::Close:
        return QCoreApplication::translate("QPlatformTheme", "Close");
    case QPlatformDialogHelper::Cancel:
        return QCoreApplication::translate("QPlatformTheme", "Cancel");
    case QPlatformDialogHelper::Discard:
        return QCoreApplication::translate("QPlatformTheme", "Discard");
    case QPlatformDialogHelper::Help:
        return QCoreApplication::translate("QPlatformTheme", "Help");
    case QPlatformDialogHelper::Apply:
        return QCoreApplication::translate("QPlatformTheme", "Apply");
    case QPlatformDialogHelper::Reset:
        return QCoreApplication::translate("QPlatformTheme", "Reset");
    case QPlatformDialogHelper::RestoreDefaults:
        return QCoreApplication::translate("QPlatformTheme", "Restore Defaults");
    default:
        break;
    }
    return QString();
}

So, in order to localize Yes/No buttons, you will need to add in your .ts file the following:

<context>
    <name>QPlatformTheme</name>
    <message>
        <source>&amp;Yes</source>
        <translation>[...]</translation>
    </message>
    <message>
        <source>&amp;No</source>
        <translation>[...]</translation>
    </message>
</context>

Android have its own subclassed platform theme (QAndroidPlatformTheme) with overriden defaultStandardButtonText(), so for Android you will need to add the following:

<context>
    <name>QAndroidPlatformTheme</name>
    <message>
        <source>Yes</source>
        <translation>[...]</translation>
    </message>
    <message>
        <source>No</source>
        <translation>[...]</translation>
    </message>
</context>

iOS does not override this method in its own QPlatformTheme subclass, so no additional action is needed for it.

You can take a look on one of my projects which use the technique described above for QML MessageBox localization on Android and iOS.

I would like to know how you do to prevent Qt to vanished those translation each time we update them ? — roman Sztergbaum, Jul 22 '21 at 08:13

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 31 '15 at 11:26

The translations you need should be found inside a qtquickcontrols_*.qm file. Deploying Translations states concerning this

Usually, there are .qm files for the application, and, if a version of Qt is used that is not installed on the system, Qt's .qm files need to be deployed as well.

However your application might just fail to find a suitable translation file. If you only need the translations for Yes and No, you could as well add these to your translation files with a context of DefaultMessageDialog

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE TS>
<TS version="2.1">
<context>
    <name>DefaultMessageDialog</name>
    <message>
        <source>Yes</source>
        <translation type="unfinished"></translation>
    </message>
    <message>
        <source>No</source>
        <translation type="unfinished"></translation>
    </message>
</context>
</TS>

Adding the built-in MessageDialog would work as well. Or if you'd like to, you could just use a dummy file DefaultMessageDialog.qml

Rectangle {
    Button {
        id: yesButton
        text: qsTr("Yes")
    }
    Button {
        id: noButton
        text: qsTr("No")
    }
}

and add this one instead.

Stephen Quan · Answer 3 · 2019-09-17T05:05:53.197

On Desktop platforms, such as Windows, macOS and Linux, most Dialog components from QtQuick.Dialogs uses C++ widget components. Their source translations are covered in qtbase_{lang}.ts files and their compiled translations are covered in qtbase_{lang}.qmfiles.

In Qt5.13.1:

refer to C:\Qt\Qt5.13.1\5.13.1\Src\qttranslations\translations for source translations
refer to C:\Qt\Qt5.13.1\5.13.1\mingw83_64\translations for the compiled translations

If you find the sizes of qtbase to be too large for your liking, you can deploy a minified version of the translation files. The following Windows Batch file creates French, German and Japanese subsets of the qtbase files:

setlocal
set QTDIR=C:\Qt\Qt5.13.1\5.13.1\msvc2017_64\
set QTSRC=C:\Qt\Qt5.13.1\5.13.1\Src
ECHO %QTSRC%\qtbase\src\widgets\dialogs\qmessagebox.cpp > %TEMP%\qtbase_min.lst
ECHO %QTSRC%\qtbase\src\widgets\dialogs\qfiledialog.cpp >> %TEMP%\qtbase_min.lst
ECHO %QTSRC%\qtbase\src\widgets\dialogs\qcolordialog.cpp >> %TEMP%\qtbase_min.lst
ECHO %QTSRC%\qtbase\src\widgets\dialogs\qfontdialog.cpp >> %TEMP%\qtbase_min.lst
ECHO %QTSRC%\qtbase\src\widgets\dialogs\qinputdialog.cpp >> %TEMP%\qtbase_min.lst
ECHO %QTSRC%\qtbase\src\widgets\dialogs\qprogressdialog.cpp >> %TEMP%\qtbase_min.lst
ECHO %QTSRC%\qtbase\src\widgets\dialogs\qwizard.cpp >> %TEMP%\qtbase_min.lst
ECHO %QTSRC%\qtbase\src\gui\kernel\qplatformtheme.cpp >> %TEMP%\qtbase_min.lst
ECHO %QTSRC%\qtbase\src\plugins\platforms\android\qandroidplatformtheme.cpp >> %TEMP%\qtbase_min.lst
ECHO %QTSRC%\qtbase\src\platformsupport\themes\genericunix\qgenericunixthemes.cpp >> %TEMP%\qtbase_min.lst
for /d %%F in (fr de ja en) do copy %QTSRC%\qttranslations\translations\qtbase_%%F.ts qtbase_min_%%F.ts
%QTDIR%\bin\lupdate @%TEMP%/qtbase_min.lst -pluralonly -locations none -ts qtbase_min_en.ts
for /d %%F in (fr de ja en) do if "%%F" neq "en" %QTDIR%\bin\lupdate.exe @%TEMP%/qtbase_min.lst -no-obsolete -locations none -ts qtbase_min_%%F.ts
for /d %%F in (fr de ja en) do %QTDIR%\bin\lrelease qtbase_min_%%F.ts

On mobile platforms, such as iOS and Android, Dialog the MessageDialog component the translatable text are still covered in the qtbase_{lang}.ts files. For the other components, such as ColorDialog, FontDialog, they are implemented in QML as QtQuick components. The translations will be found in the qtquickcontrols_{lang}.ts and qtquickcontrols_{lang}.qm files.

The following demonstrates how to create minified versions of the qtquickcontrols_{lang}.ts and qtquickcontrols_{lang}.qm files for French, German and Japanese:

setlocal
set QTDIR=C:\Qt\Qt5.13.1\5.13.1\msvc2017_64\
set QTSRC=C:\Qt\Qt5.13.1\5.13.1\Src
ECHO %QTSRC%\qtquickcontrols\src\dialogs\DefaultMessageDialog.qml > %TEMP%\qtquickcontrols_min.lst
ECHO %QTSRC%\qtquickcontrols\src\dialogs\DefaultColorDialog.qml >> %TEMP%\qtquickcontrols_min.lst
ECHO %QTSRC%\qtquickcontrols\src\dialogs\DefaultFileDialog.qml >> %TEMP%\qtquickcontrols_min.lst
ECHO %QTSRC%\qtquickcontrols\src\dialogs\DefaultFontDialog.qml >> %TEMP%\qtquickcontrols_min.lst
ECHO %QTSRC%\qtquickcontrols\src\dialogs\DefaultDialogWrapper.qml >> %TEMP%\qtquickcontrols_min.lst
for /d %%F in (fr de ja en) do copy %QTSRC%\qttranslations\translations\qtquickcontrols_%%F.ts qtquickcontrols_min_%%F.ts
%QTDIR%\bin\lupdate @%TEMP%/qtquickcontrols_min.lst -pluralonly -locations none -ts qtquickcontrols_min_en.ts
for /d %%F in (fr de ja en) do if "%%F" neq "en" %QTDIR%\bin\lupdate.exe @%TEMP%/qtquickcontrols_min.lst -no-obsolete -locations none -ts qtquickcontrols_min_%%F.ts
for /d %%F in (fr de ja en) do %QTDIR%\bin\lrelease qtquickcontrols_min_%%F.ts

Presently, at Qt5.13.1, there are 22 languages (including English). If your desired language is not covered in this list (e.g. Indonesian, Vietnamese), then, you can still use the above scripts to create placeholder minified version of qtbase/qtquickcontrols but you will have to populate the qtbase_min_{lang}.ts files yourself.

How to translate default qsTr fields - e.g. MessageDialog Yes / No buttons

EDIT

EDIT 2

3 Answers3