Hi
Soemthing that causes a lot of people grief is that CB still insists on having languages as a plugin, rather than using ini files as almost everything in joomla does.
A second issue is that it's hard to find translations which are up to date.
The first issue could be solved in that the conformity with joomla is used for these files. I suspect that would also encourage translators. I manage one site which currently has 7 different languages and the hassels which happen when we add new variables and ask the different translators to do their thing are huge. The number of times we get a white page, because of a missing apostrophe! But why? The translators are not programmers and getting them to do this correctly is a problem with every language added. If there is a good technical reason why the languages can't be in a simple ini file, fine, but then we need a built in tool to help with the translation. If you guys are interested, one colleague who works on that site with me, has programmed a very simple tool to help with this, but it's not integrated. We would happily donate this to you to include in CB, as currently, we can't do that, not knowing CB well enough. It's now an external tool which grabs the language file via a password system and presents the file in three colums:
- the original string
- the english version
- a blank column for the new language version (or blank spaces where no translation exists
The translation creates a backup and saves the new version for use. If you are interested let me know
For the second issue, why is the language translation such a mess? There are many sites which like using CB in all sorts of languages and also multiple languages. Finding the appropriate translation can take for ever, because it's not all in the same place, the different versions are not clearly indicated. In other words, there is no document management for this item. That's a shame, because it creates a big barrier to using CB.
So please, implement a single source for language files and make it clear that this is the definitive resource. Also, for which version the translation support. I am currently trying to translate the latest version of CB and what happens? The new strings are shoved in all over the place, so it's almost impossible to use a previous version and just translate the new bits? Why? Don't you want it to be available in other languages? If that's the case, say so and potential users can look for something that doesn't create such hard work out of something that should be simple.
I think CB is fantastic and I bow down before the skills of Beat, Nant, Kyle, et al. I am truly impressed. So why let yourselves down by paying so little attention to a detail which is so important to so many current and potential users.
In hope, sincerely
David
nant