First translations for the Linux app #3643

Problem

The Linux app ships in English only. linux/po/LINGUAS holds its two comment lines and no locale, so the packages install no catalogue.

The plumbing is in place (linux/ROADMAP.md, Packaging and platform, Translations):

• The app's strings go through gettext (linux/crates/app/src/i18n.rs): about 1,150 calls in crates/app/src outside the tests, plus the translatable strings in data/resources/ui/, the desktop entry, the metainfo and the GSettings schema.
• po/POTFILES.in lists every source file, and CI fails when it is stale.
• linux/po/README.md describes adding a locale with msginit and updating it with tablepro-update-po.

What makes a start harder today:

• tablepro.pot is not committed (ci(linux): drop the doc-symbol step and stop committing tablepro.pot #3575), and generating it needs gettext 1.0 or newer (linux/po/README.md, Generating tablepro.pot). Ubuntu 26.04 ships 0.23.2 and Fedora 44 ships 0.26, so a translator on either cannot produce the template.
• Release criterion 9 is still open: a few SSH details from the ssh crate and some TLS failures still reach the user in English (linux/ROADMAP.md, Release criteria).
• There is no stated place for translators to work.

Proposed solution

• Start with the languages the macOS app already ships, so the same translators can help: French, Korean, Turkish, Vietnamese, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese (apple/TablePro/Resources/Localizable.xcstrings), as fr, ko, tr, vi, zh_CN and zh_TW.
• Have CI generate tablepro.pot with gettext 1.0 and publish it, as a workflow artifact on main and a file on each linux-v* release, so translators do not need gettext 1.0 themselves.
• Decide where translators work, pull requests against po/*.po only or a hosted translation service, and say so in linux/CONTRIBUTING.md and linux/po/README.md.
• Add a locale to LINGUAS only once it is complete enough to ship, and check that both packages install its .mo and that the app shows it under that locale.
• Close release criterion 9 before asking for translations, so translators are not asked twice.

Done means: at least one locale is in LINGUAS, the PPA and COPR packages install it, and the app starts translated under that locale.

Alternatives considered

No response

Platform

Linux

Related database type

N/A / General