Language all the way...

[F1trader.de]

Hi,

Like some other forums you may choose another language. That's great, but not the way all forums deal with language issue. What is the problem? Well, when selecting another language, the functionalities and text documents are perfectly displayed in the requested language.

The problem is that the boards & child-boards itself are not! That's not smart. Why would I display topics in english, german or greek when my users choose dutch as the default language. If a user selects dutch he/she expects to see the topics in dutch too and not a mixture of multiple languages. It is hard for me to understand that developers do not consider this as a seperate feature. Technically it must be possible to choose for what language you want to add a board (and child-board) and display the board for that language only. Problem solved!!!

Could this be an option in the near future??

[Visualcode]

F1trader.de, if I understand you correctly, you want to replace user-selected topic-titles with the language they selected.

How SMF handles its language usage is by using language files. These languages define how to say each thing in different languages. The purpose of this is to allow instructions for the forum to be in their language without the confusion which would be brought by a translation function. The way they do this, is by having native speakers submit the way to say things in those other languages.

The problem with what you want, is that users would have a lot of problems reading due to the errors in translation functions. By the end of a thread, with all the errors, you would have a really confusing conversation for everyone. Translation functions are just not that far yet . . . .

What you should understand, is the purpose of the SMF language files is not to allow all users to choose their own language. It is more so that an admin may run a non-English forum. So, if you have a Spanish forum, for example, all instructions on the forum would be in Spanish, making it easier on users. The only real purpose of allowing a user to change stuff at all, is if he feels more comfortable in one language than another, yet knows both.

[F1trader.de]

Hi Visualcode,

I see it is a little confusing to explain what I want, but basically it is quit simple what I want.

First let me say what I don't want because I know for a fact that translation software is no sollution for the problem I am describing here. I don't want software to do topic translations in the forum itself.

I only want the option in my ADMIN to add boards & categories in their respective language.
Because I run international sites it is important for me to display all the content in that language, not just the functionalities like login/register or help.php

On another open source board for example  support can be asked from moderators in different countries. You can switch to your native language and submit a topic to let's say a moderator from Greece.

The problem is that all these topics finally are dropped and displayed on the same board. But what good is it for me as a dutch guy to see kilometers discussions in other languages? Do you get my point?

So basically what I want is to add my categories & boards in a specific language.
The translations of these categories & Boards will be done by myself.
The visitors will only see the categories & boards for the language they have chosen.

It has a few advantages.
- Only 1 time registration
- No need for more installations or other domain names
- It looks better for the total of registered members
- Members for example from holland can easily discuss also on the for example english/german/french etc..  board
(when spoken the language offcourse)
They don't have to go physically to another board, meaning another registration...

I hope it is more clear now what I am interested in...

[Visualcode]

Well, there is already a mod for this, sort of. It will require some work on your part, but not too much. Here is what you need to do:

1) Set up categories for each language.
2) Add boards for each language to those categories.
3) Create groups for each language.
4) Set your boards to local-permissions (board-based-permissions, not global)
5) Set the permissions for each board to only allow viewing by members of that language group. (You can just set up one for each language, then tell the others to copy that setup)
6) Download this mod: http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=485

Now, you have it setup so that users may only access the boards of their language. Then, on sign-up, they would just need to pick the group (allowed by the mod) which fits their language.

Not the best solution, I know, but it may work for you.

[F1trader.de]

I am quit surprised that none of the message boards developers seems to really care about this language issue. When running a board for more than 1 language I think it is preferable to do so in your own language only. Now you may translate the translation files but the main board categories will only shown in the language you saved them in. That just don't work for me...

The way you described a workaround visualcode is for my site (www+username) a way to intensive job.

It would be so much easier to just add a board in a certain language and also just display it in that language. Looks like a quit simple extra feature to me which none of the other boards have yet.

The only thing is that you should also store the submitted topics in that particular language too, so it won't show for the other languages..

Would be a great additional feature if you ask me...

[F1trader.de]

To solve my language problem I have installed the SMF software twice.

To see what I mean I have to mention the website: www.chitchat.gr [nofollow]

I hope it is not considered spam as it is only want to demonstrate how I want to work when using more than one language.

I have added 2 country flags to switch between the language.

The only problem is that  I need to register for both languages in order to use the board for those 2 languages.

It is also a shame that this way you cannot display the total number of members for both boards.