Although Virtaal's initial focus is on software translation (localisation or l10n), the development team intends to make it useful for several purposes.

Virtaal is built on the powerful API of the Translate Toolkit. “Virtaal” is an Afrikaans play on words meaning “For Language”, but also refers to translation.

Here are some key features of "Virtaal":

· Support for many localization file formats: Gettext (.po and .mo), XLIFF (.xlf), TMX, TBX, WordFast TM (.txt), Qt Linguist (.ts), Qt Phrase Book (.qph)
· Ideal for beginners: Simple and intuitive layout, Highlighting of XML and escape characters, Displays comments from programmers and previous translators, Displays context (like msgctxt in PO), Localisation guide available from the Help menu
· Productive environment: Fast and easy navigation within the file, Auto-correction based on OpenOffice.org's auto-correction data files, Auto-completion modelled after OpenOffice.org, Automatic sensing of the initial cursor position, Copying original string to target string taking your language's punctuation rules into account, Easily find your work by moving between the units that are untranslated or fuzzy
· Searching with regular expressions and Unicode normalisation
· Spell checker for translation and original text (might not work on all Windows platforms)
· Debug compiled application translations by opening .mo files directly

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

There are far too many improvements to list, but some of the new features include:
· Suggestions from several sources of translation memory, including Open-Tran.eu
· A localisation tutorial built into the help menu. Now you can recommend Virtaal to new translators on your team and let Virtaal do their initial training!
· The possibility to migrate your settings and translation memory from other FOSS translation tools.
· A new plug-in system that will make it easier for people to customise their Virtaal installations and for developers to contribute new functionality. If you ever wanted your translation tool to say "You are awesome!" every time you finish a string, you can now do this very easily!