Language Translation

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Music transcends time, borders and languages. Unfortunately, very little else has this super power.

Snakeoil is designed for the English Speaking population, however, this is only approximately 1.5 out of 7+ billion. To allow more people to use Snakeoil, the system is designed for internationalism support. The following three languages are currently supported:

  • English (UK)
  • 中文 (简体)
  • 中文 (繁體)

We need your help to expand the list! Follow this simple documentation to translate the Snakeoil Web App to your language of choice and share it with the rest of the world.

Please note that language translations only applies to the web interface. Internationalisation support in software players are still down to the respective developers.

Language Edtior

A language editor is included in the Snakeoil WebApp from v1.1.0 (Blind Testing) onwards. To start:

  1. Click on the System menu item to go to the System page

you can invoke it in the System menu, under Customisation (The two little icons on the right hand side)

Edit Current Translation

The first icon on the left looks like a pen writing on a square sheet of paper. Click this button when you want to edit the currently selected language.

For example, in the example below you'd be modifying the language file English (UK) if you click the button highlighted by the yellow square.

This is a partial screenshot of the language editor when you are editing a pre-existing language file. Notice that you cannot change the File name of a current language file when operating in this mode. You are free to update the text in Language. This field is used by the Snakeoil Web App when changing language.

The specifics of using the language editor will be discussed later at the end of this article.

Create New Translation

Click the 2nd icon (plus sign) to create a new translation.

You'd need to provide a file name for the new language you're creating. This will be the physical filename that will be stored on the computer file system, and distributed with each release of the Snakeoil OS firmware. We recommend the use of WW3 country code. The Language Editor will not allow 2 translations for the same region. So if there is a name clash, just enter a number or a special code at the end (e.g. for American English, enter the code as en-US).

As an example, to create an American English translation, you can use the following:

Once you've saved the file, the new language can be selected from the drop down box, like so:

Using The Language Editor

Once you are comfortable with the act of translation you can start and modify the files are you see fit. New translations will always use English as the default template. This is to avoid Chinese whispers (pun intended), i.e. translating from language X to Y, and then from Y to Z may result in undesirable consequences.


Please remember to click the Save Changes button at the end of the page to create the language file. Once you have created a new translation please download it and send it to the Snakeoil Squad. Refer to the next section for more details.

Sending Your Translation To The Snakeoil Squad

You should see a white text book like this for every translation. Click on the download link to download the translation resource file (XML format), and then click on the Snakeoil Squad link for our email.Any questions please post in the forums.

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