Languages why is the text not translated?

[jmille44]

Languages - How does it work if you want the forum posts to be in another language?
Say I choose French language, only some of the menus change to French but the posts themselves, they remain in the English.  Is there a way to have the language choice change all of the text to that language?

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

That is literally impossible to do reliably, and is not a part of SMF by default.
Automatic translations tend to be bad, and in many situations can end up completely changing the meaning of the original post so I would suggest thinking twice before attempting something like this at all.

[jmille44]

Thanks for the response, I assumed the language files would translate but after reading your post it makes sense that it doesn't.  Some websites you can choose the language and it translates but maybe it's not translating but just showing a different language version of the website.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

Both are pretty common solutions actually, some sites offer on the fly translations, some offer pre-translated content.
But for forums where the posts are mostly user generated content, these are both fairly bad solutions.
There is a mod for 2.0 to offer Google Translate, but like said, I wouldn't really suggest using something like that.