_()

#define     _(String)

Marks a string for translation, gets replaced with the translated string at runtime.

Since 2.4

Q_()

#define     Q_(String)

Like _(), but applies g_strip_context() to the translation. This has the advantage that the string can be adorned with a prefix to guarantee uniqueness and provide context to the translator.

One use case given in the gettext manual is GUI translation, where one could e.g. disambiguate two "Open" menu entries as "File|Open" and "Printer|Open". Another use case is the string "Russian" which may have to be translated differently depending on whether it's the name of a character set or a language. This could be solved by using "charset|Russian" and "language|Russian".

Since 2.4

N_()

#define     N_(String)

Marks a string for translation, gets replaced with the untranslated string at runtime. This is useful in situations where the translated strings can't be directly used, e.g. in string array initializers.

     {
       static const char *messages[] = {
         N_("some very meaningful message"),
         N_("and another one")
       };
       const char *string;
       ...
       string
         = index > 1 ? _("a default message") : gettext (messages[index]);
     
       fputs (string);
       ...
     }

Since 2.4

g_strip_context ()

const gchar* g_strip_context                (const gchar *msgid,
                                             const gchar *msgval);

An auxiliary function for gettext() support (see Q_()).

Since 2.4

g_get_language_names ()

const gchar* const * g_get_language_names   (void);

Computes a list of applicable locale names, which can be used to e.g. construct locale-dependent filenames or search paths. The returned list is sorted from most desirable to least desirable and always contains the default locale "C".

For example, if LANGUAGE=de:en_US, then the returned list is "de", "en_US", "en", "C".

This function consults the environment variables LANGUAGE, LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES and LANG to find the list of locales specified by the user.

Since 2.6