Translation

The main purpose of this component is to assist translations. To translate a specific language file, you simply click on the file or check the box next to the file and then click on the Edit button when at the Language Files screen. 

The first part of the translation screen shows the informtion regarding the translation file including language name, filename, version, author and others. Those values are parsed from the comments at the beginning of the file.

Unfortunately there is no standard format for those information fields, and some language files don't even contain any of them. Therefore, in quite a few cases, you may see them containing unintelligible values. The remedy is to manually edit those language files adding comments at the top of the files using the same format utililized in Joomla! Core language files.

The reset of the page shows all the phrases in the language file to be translated. The left side of each line is the original phrase in the corresponding reference file, and the right side is a text field for you to enter the proper translation for that phrase. Any translation fields color coded red indicate the translation is identical to the original text. This makes identifying phrases needed to be translated very easy.

For some language files you may see sections of phrases. This happends when comments are used in the language file to orginized phraes into different sections. Sometimes there is one last section at the bottom of the page with translation fields color coded green. This section collects all the phrases exist in the translation file but not in the reference file. Often that means those phrases were removed from the reference language file.

If there are phrases shouldn't be translated, but you want to treat the file as completely translated, you can go back to the Details section and check the Mark this Translation File as complete box.

Finally one helpful feature of this component is the reminder asking you to save your work every five minutes.