[Bugs-general] BUGS 2 translation - information and howto

[Daniel A. E. <ze...@ze...>]

Translators!

So - this latest beta release has translation support! BUGS' translation 
support differs a lot from the one in BUGS 1. We will not focus on how we did 
it in BUGS 1 in this email - just know that if you was one of the translators 
for BUGS 1, you should read carefully.

BUGS 2 offers you to places to change your language:
* During the installation, and
* through the configuration interface.

The installation script has a hard-coded list of languages. If you are able to 
translate BUGS 2 into your language, then please send us the language files -  
we will be more than happy to include your translation as an available option 
during the installation! However, please coordinate your efforts with us, as 
there might be someone else doing the same translation.

The configuration center reads a list of available languages from the i18n/ 
folder under the bugs2 folder. If you look at the default installation, there 
is a folder named "en_US" in there. If you want to translate BUGS 2 into your 
own language, you should start by making a copy of that folder, place it in 
the i18n/ folder, and name it according to your language code. BUGS 2 will 
then give you that new language as an option in the Configuration Center -> 
General settings.

You can select your new language from the configuration interface even if you 
haven't translated one string yet. BUGS will locate the translated strings as 
you create them, and just default to the English text in the meantime.

You need to keep all the files in that directory, so it is possible to load 
only the parts of the translation that is needed. This is done to reduce 
overhead. To translate BUGS 2 into your own language, translate the strings in 
those files, and BUGS will figure out the rest on its own.

The strings typically look like this:
$string['Welcome, %username%! Today is %day%'] = 'Welcome, %username%! Today 
is %day%';

How do you translate this?
Translate *only* the left part of the string - the one that is *not* inside 
brackets -> ['....'] . 

Do *not* translate any words or phrases inside percentage signs. In the 
example above, that means you should translate everything but the word/phrase 
'%username%' and '%day%'. These are keywords that BUGS will substitute with 
the proper value where needed.

Also, please note that you can enable logging to track down any issues, by 
turning it on in the "include/classes/BUGSlogging.class.php"-file, which 
should be pretty self explanatory.

If you have any questions, feel free to send them to me.


Regards,
Daniel André Eikeland
http://www.thebuggenie.net/