HOW TO: Translating BIGACE into a new language

[Kevin]

This HowTo should cover the process translating BIGACE into new languages.

==> This is not the complete docu, just a begin for all the ones who are going to translate BIGACE <==
Post your translation questions in here, we will enhance the documentation together!

Required file encoding
Your files need to be encoded with UTF-8 character set, otherwise it won't work with BIGACE.

Start with the english package

Please go to our Nightly Build page:
http://www.bigace.de/nightly-builds.html

Then download the "english" translation package. Its name is currently: en_2.7zip
If the download doesn't work, the version likely changed. Post a reply here or try to find the correct version yourself

Extract that package and you have everything to get statred.

Locale

First important task is to find your languages two-letter and four-letter locale.
Lets assume you translate to Spanish, which has the short locale "es" (for your translations you use your own locale!).

Then you would rename the /en/ directory to /es/.
Find all files and directorys with the name /en/ and rename them as well.

Open all language files and translate everything inside.

Take the correct flag icons for your language and replace the en.gif files. Use the flag icons from the famfamfam flag icon package.

Edit the language definition file at /system/language/es.ini and add the correct values.

Packaging & Testing

Now, ZIP everything and post it here in the translation Forum.
We will test it and create a deployable Extension package to get feedback from more people.

You can test it yourself, by copying everything into your system. If you edited the files correctly, you will see the new language in the Administration top frame in the language chooser drop down.

Test with tool support

If your sources were added to CVS, you can test your translations at:
http://dev.bigace-cms.com/Translation-Check

[ragou]

It's not a problem to me to translate  BIGACE in Bulgarian, but when I change character encoding to windows-1251
Everyting written in cyrillic appears like question marks "". How can I fix this problem?
Regards

[Kevin]

This problem can have multiple reasons. Check your file encoding - it must be utf-8.  This is the reason happening most of the time. Just convert the file with a good text editor, then check again and let me know.

If you save your translation files with windows using windows-1251 characters will be broken.

You could change the character encoding, which bigace uses. Check the language definition files at /system/language/XX.ini, you can define database and character encodings there.

First try converting the file, changing the character encoding should be the last possible choice.