Supporting GUI Translation/Translations DAT Format

The translations.dat file is generated from the po/*.po files in the ScummVM source code repository. It contains the data needed by ScummVM to display a translated GUI.

The file is a binary file with

1. a header
2. a block with the list of languages
3. a block with the the english messages
4. a block with the translated messages for language 1
5. a block with the translated messages for language 2
6. ...
7. a block with the translated messages for language n

The following description is valid for version 2 of the file format. Version 1 is very similar but does not contain the context strings in the translated messages.

The header

Type	Size	Order	Description
String	12		'TRANSLATIONS'
Byte	1		Version (of the file format)
uint16	2	BE	Number of translations
uint16	2	BE	Size in bytes of block 1 (list of languages)
uint16	2	BE	Size in bytes of block 2 (english messages)
uint16	2	BE	Size in bytes of block 3 (first translation)
uint16	2	BE	Size in bytes of block 4 (second translation)
...	...	...	...
uint16	2	BE	Size in bytes of block n+2 (nth translation)

List of Languages

For each translation there is the following entry:

Type	Size	Order	Description
uint16	2	BE	Size (in bytes) of the following string (including the terminating '\0')
String	??		Language and country code (e.g. 'de_DE')
uint16	2	BE	Size (in bytes) of the language name string (including the terminating '\0')
String	??		Language name (e.g. 'Deutsch')

English messages

Type	Size	Order	Description
uint16	2	BE	Number of messages
			First message entry (see below)
			Second message entry
...	...	...	...
			Last message entry

Each message entry has the following format:

Type	Size	Order	Description
uint16	2	BE	Size (in bytes) of the english message string (including the terminating '\0')
String	??		English message

The messages are sorted in alphabetical order.

Translated messages

For each translation there is a block with the following format:

Type	Size	Order	Description
uint16	2	BE	Number of translated messages
uint16	2	BE	Size (in bytes) of the charset string (including the terminating '\0')
String	??		Charset (e.g. 'iso-8859-1')
			First translation entry (see below)
...	...	...	...
			Last translation entry

Each translation entry has the following format:

Type	Size	Order	Description
uint16	2	BE	Index of the entry in the english message table (index starts at 0)
uint16	2	BE	Size (in bytes) of the translated message string (including the terminating '\0')
String	??		Translated message
uint16	2	BE	Size (in bytes) of the context string (including the terminating '\0'). Size is 0 when there is no context.
String	??		Context string (if a context is defined).