Creating a language translation for the component.

Transifex

One method that we have recently decided to make use of is the ‘Transifex’ project. To be truly multi-lingual most freely available Joomla component (including modules and plugins) relies on local communities to create language packs. We realise that is can be a very dirty job, that is very time consuming. Transifex provides a mechanism to make language translations faster but with less work. Making use of this mechanism we hope to be able to provide users with a wider variety of available languages ready to download.

Looking at the number of existing components already making use of Transifex, we are joining an already varied and wide ranging community.

Transifex comes with the options of a client or a web interface and also has an extensive help system.

One site that might provide useful to translators starting to get to grips with Transifex and its usage is provided here. Not being multilingual ourselves we cannot really make any valid comments upon how useful they specifically are, but they certainly appear to be informative and complete.

Basically the language files are placed upon the Transifex server by ourselves within a 'project' i.e 'Issue Tracker'. The translators have an account (free upon request) on Transifex and request access to a language, which if granted allows access to the specific language files. The translators can edit the language strings for their specific language directly online, or via the use of a 'Transifex client' (freely downloadable) download the files, perform the translation locally and then upload them back to the Transifex server.

On our end we are kept informed of the state of translations automatically and via the use of a Joomla component named CTransifex (Compojoom) which can automatically generate the required installable zip files and make them available for users to download.

This avoids the need to create multiple zip files manually making the distribution task much simpler and relieving the translators from the tedious task of maintaining zip files, and at the same time providing an easier translation tool.

There are more details upon our website http://macrotoneconsulting.co.uk/index.php/Macrotone/language-guide-extensions.html and also upon the Transifex web site https://www.transifex.com/.