Hoping to make a UTF-8 Bilingual English/Japanese based forum

Started by ebisudave, September 06, 2004, 12:28:57 PM

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ebisudave

Dear Simple Machines,

I have been using phpBB for a while, but found that customizing the interface was far too cumbersome a task.

I saw YaBB SE used on a web site and thought it was nice, and that's what brought me to SMF.

My main goal is to create a forum which will present a bilingual interface in English and Japanese, and for everything to be in UTF-8 encoding. Is this workable with SMF? Can someone outline the steps I would need to do this. I am willing to do the translation, provided that it just involves editing a file or entering text into fields of a MySQL database. I'd like to have an idea of how much work this is before I invest heavily in learning SMF. My mistake with phpBB was to learn a lot about it, and then discover that making a translation (they had a Japanese, and of course an English, but I needed to make a combined version) was a hassle.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Dave in Tokyo

CapriSkye

hello and welcome to smf. im the chinese language translator, and i enjoy doing it, hope you are too.

when you are doing the translation, you just edit all the files in Themes/default/languages then translate all the text strings in the files, no need to do anything in mysql database. im not really sure what you mean by using english and japanese interface though, because when you're forum is in japanese encoding, users still able to post english. hope that helps and good luck.

[Unknown]

The user's language is hot-switchable; is that what you mean?

To change the encoding, you only need to change...
Themes/default/languages/index.english.php:
$txt['lang_character_set'] = 'ISO-8859-1';

To:
$txt['lang_character_set'] = 'UTF-8';

-[Unknown]

ebisudave

Thanks for responding.

I think my initial question must have been a little unclear.
I understand that users can switch between languages, but that is not the desired functionality. I want every text option that is on the page to be in English and Japanese simultaneously. So, for example, where it says "Post reply", it would say "Post reply/返事する".
So I want to make sure two things will be easily accomplished:
1. All output generated by SMF is in UTF-8 encoding.
2. I'd like to know how difficult the translation process is. CapriSkye says that all one needs to do is translate "all the text strings" in "Themes/default/languages", but is that a lot of files, and does it mean hunting around inside a lot of code for instances of text? How many files are we talking about? And how much text in total? This was my problem with phpBB, was that one could make a translation, but one had to hunt around in multiple files looking for different instances to translate.

Dave

ebisudave


... Also, I am also going to have to make bilingual graphics.

phpBB came with a nice Photoshop file with which a person could use as a starting point for making new graphical interfaces. But it was a hassle to figure out where to upload all the files, and the Photoshop file turned out to be incomplete as far as all the graphics elements needed. How difficult is it to make a custom graphic interface in SMF?

Dave

CapriSkye

if you could download the english language files to look for yourself, to me it wasn't that much. there are about 15 files, and some of them are pretty short so not much to translate. as for hunting down the text string, you don't, you just translate line by line. every line has to be translated, if you know how to. or just put a comment like this at the top of the text string, //untranslated
and the forum buttons, you have to pm andrea to get more information.
also take a look at this post: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=7290.0
that's for the default buttons, but you can always make your own....

also for the Post reply/返事する thingy, you can just add japanese right next to the english string. this is an example:
$txt[1] = 'Post reply/返事する';

[Unknown]

You might want to contact our language coordinator, Bostasp.  I know that one Logue was working on a Japanese translation, which might make it easier for this duality.

There may be some barriers to using two languages at once.  While effort has certainly been made to make SMF internationalizable, I must admit that I know only a small handful of Japanese words, and only a very limited set of German and Spanish - and while others on the team also generally know multiple languages, few of us know a non-Germanic/non-Romantic language as our first language.

However, if you find any issues, please do not hesitate to contact us.  We will work out a solution to make SMF properly translatable, if at all possible.

As for the strings, they are just as CapriSkye described.  However, if you come upon any text (any at all!) that is hard coded anywhere, I would consider this as much a bug as if your attachments were deleted on any edit.

As for images, there are currently no psds available.  However, Andrea uses an automated translation generator on the buttons, so if you give her the text she should be able to make it for you ;).

All translatable images (all those with text on them) are stored in Themes/yourtheme/images/yourlanguage by default.  Images in other places don't have text on them ;).

Again, if there are any troubles we'd like to hear about them.

Thanks,
-[Unknown]

ebisudave

I hope people will still see this thread as it's been a while since I have posted any developments. Apologies for my delay, as I have been getting SMF up and running and getting used to it's basic functionality.

When it comes to translating, CapriSkye said there "are only about 15 files", and that some of them aren't that big. However, I went and downloaded the English language pack to see finally doing my translation. However, not including the image files, which I'll handle seperately, there seem to be considerably more than 15 files to sift through for translation. There are html files, xml files, php files, and at least one css file. All told I'm looking at at least 50 files here.

Am I missing something? Where did this number of 15 files come from, and which ones are they?

Dave

CapriSkye

that's my mistake, there are 21 language files in the default theme folder, couple in classic theme folder, and 37 in the help folder. sorry for the confusion.

[Unknown]

If you send me the xml files, translated, I can generate the html files for you.  I can also show you how to generate them yourself - post a topic about it.

You can also use Internet Explorer to see the xml files as html using the xslt stylesheets.  You don't have to translate the .html, .xslt, or .css files.

-[Unknown]

ebisudave

So... I only have to translate the php and the xml files, and there are 58 files in total. Thanks for clearing that up.

Thanks for the offer Unknown about helping convert the xml files to html. I use GoLive which I believe I may be able to use to accomplish that task, but if I run into trouble, I will be in touch about it.

Also, I found a Japanese translation by Logue that was mentioned here, and I have a copy of it, so, assuming his/her translation is decent enough, my "translation" job should only involve a fair amount of copying and pasting.

It seems I might have all the tools I need to get my bilingual interface going. Thank you all for your generous help, and if I hit any more walls it's nice to know I can come back here.

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