Now I am ready to offer two language packs in both zh_CN and zh_CN_utf-8 format.

For those who would like to test out my Chinese translation packs with some helpful information in Chinese as well, please visit the following page for download and instruction.

http://blogs.vistaview.org/blog.php/2008/03/29/b2evolution

If you can't read Chinese, you may simply download the language pack file below,

http://blogs.vistaview.org/media/blogs/blog/b2evolution_cn.zip

and then follow the general instruction here for deployment.

http://manual.b2evolution.net/Localization

Comments and suggestion for improvement are welcome here. Thanks.

Thank you guizi6! I can't read even the tiniest bit of it, and to me it's always question marks, but hooray for another translation!

Well, I did submit my language packs to François with information provided in the download page on APril 30. I guess they would be posted in the download page sometimes?

I haven't got chance to check out the latest released 2.4.2 yet. I will try to take a close look at the changes of the messages.po file to see if a update on those packs are needed.

My understanding is there is no changes to messages.pot between 241 and 242. As to why this (these!) translations are not available on the "Extend -> Language packs" page: I have no idea.

I bumped into this thread while researching more and more and more about my "translator enabler for plugins" plugin, which ran into a major snag when testing my ability to (a) create and (b) store characters that don't look like english characters. So now I have something new to learn yah? And test on my server instead of on my WAMP, but either way I think I'll end up learning something.

And therefore I thought "another translation - hooray!"

Thanks EdB for your kindness of giving me my first vote! ;-)

You are right that there is no new messages.p for upgrade from 241 to 242. Therefore, the submission I made should be good for 242 as well. Not sure why they are not available in the official download page yet.

EdB, I did notice that some plugins, or main program, may not be fully "aware of" a stranslated string is available. For example, the normal "writing" screen of postings is a plug-in, right? In this screen there is two modes, normal and advance. Under the advance mode, there is an option of "type". The list of options for "Type" is not aware of the translated strings. Is that kind of situation you are going to "enable"? Just curious.

Have a nice weekend.

guizi6 wrote:

... Is that kind of situation you are going to "enable"? Just curious.

Have a nice weekend.

No. That is a function of the core files not having the text inside the T_('text') thing that has to exist for translations to happen. Something about how when they make messages.pot it needs to see that or else it doesn't know to add it.

What I am doing is only for plugins written outside the official package, and will (does!) create messages.pot from the plugin file. In my situation the text must be like $this->T_('text') in order to be part of the messages.pot file because that's how b2evolution will know to look for the _global.php file in the correct locale folder (distributed with the plugin).

Where I am a little stuck is AFTER a translator turns messages.pot into a localized messages.po file I want my thing to create a _global.php file, but early testing showed it scrambled characters. That was when I did it using WAMP on my computer so who knows - perhaps the version on my actual server will work? Currently I am creating a fake file to turn into a messages.pot file which I can then use poedit to turn into a localized messages.po file. I am starting with one line from each full package localization so I know what to copy/paste into poedit, and I am using both of your translations. HOPEFULLY it will work or I'll be able to learn why not so I can tell translators "upload your messages.po and get a _global.php in return".

I submitted my language packs to Francois for the second time using the link in the download page. The page is written in French. After my submission, here is what I received (translated by Google):

==========================
Thank you for your message.

Even after eliminating spam, I always get over 100 emails / questions per day. Please understand that I do not have enough time each day to respond to individual requests for support. Also, some answers may take a little time ...

Questions about b2evolution: If the answer is not in the handbook, thank you ask the question in the Forums.

Questions about the content of my blogs: If possible, thank you to ask your questions publicly in the comments section under each article.
===================

Maybe I should just sit and wait for the message to be processed by Francois. ;-)

You're translation will be available in 2.5.x
Francois wrote:

The translation POT file has not been upgraded, so translations are the same as for 2.4.1. As much as possible, when moving from x.y.* to another x.y.* there should be no database and no translation differences. This is the case here.

Source: http://b2evolution.net/news/2008/04/28/b2evo-2-4-2-palms-released-stable

Why not now? For one thing, when 2.5.* will be released? And, when 2.5.x released, will there be some more update on the messages file? Thanks.

slamp wrote:

You're translation will be available in 2.5.x
Francois wrote:

The translation POT file has not been upgraded, so translations are the same as for 2.4.1. As much as possible, when moving from x.y.* to another x.y.* there should be no database and no translation differences. This is the case here.

Source: http://b2evolution.net/news/2008/04/28/b2evo-2-4-2-palms-released-stable

slamp wrote:

You're translation will be available in 2.5.x ...

Actually that's not very likely. AFAIK a few versions ago the core got big enough that not including all translations was deemed smart, so anything other than French and German are found at the "Extend" tab above. Except these to flavors of Chinese ... and maybe one or two others.

I'll see about elevating these languages - without making any promises of course.

While I am pushing for publishing my translated files, I got messages from Francois and other user's alerts on the problem on my files. Looks like I have some more work to do. So for now, I am just supporting the zh_CN_utf-8 with the following download only:

http://blogs.vistaview.org/media/blogs/blog/zh_CN_utf-8.zip

The updated zh_CN translation is available at the following URL:

http://blogs.vistaview.org/media/blogs/blog/zh_CN.zip

But I won't guarrentee it will work until further testing. I will open another thread for discussion on the zh_CN issue.

I have written a [url=http://blogs.vistaview.org/blog.php/2008/05/07/b2e-1]more detailed posting in my blog[/url] with step by step information for those who like to install b2e 2.4.2 with my translations.

The zh_CN installation problem has also been resolved, I hope. Therefore, I don't see the need to open another thread for further discussion. Thanks.

Have you corrected the charset problem that stopped the translations from being listed at http://b2evolution.net/downloads/2.4/language-packs.html ?

Francois told me that my files "contain an invalid charset". I don't know what that means since they work just fine in my testing installations.

I submitted two packs which are actually duplicated each other. They are both for zh_CN_utf-8 actually. To say the least, the zh_CN_utf-8 should be considered as "valid" character set, right? And it works for more than one month now in my own site.

I have since updated the zh_CN pack with correct content. I will try to resubmit the packs again sometimes today or tomorrow I hope.

Actually I think zh_CN_utf-8 is part of the problem because, as near as I can tell, it isn't actually a charset value. But I really don't know! I can not find online any sort of "official" list of charset values. It seems "Big5" used to be good for Chinese but is now obsolete. Near as I can tell "utf-8" seems to now be the best choice for non-latin character sets. All I know for sure is when I try to open your messages.po file with "zh_CN_utf-8 in poedit it tells me it is not a valid charset. The version with "iso-8859-1" opens, but I have this feeling it won't properly translate due to how that seems to be for latin character sets.

BTW if they are the same file then there is no valid reason to package them as if they were different files! Clearly whatever the right charset value is, it can only be one thing - right?

Does "utf-8" not work?

Welcome to my Chinese blog ;) http://ru.b2evo.net/dev/cvs/
Open zh_CN_utf-8/LC_MESSAGES/messages.po in text editor and set charset=utf-8 (not zh_CN_utf-8) then extract _global.php again that's it.

Well, I am sure you don't know Chinese. (Not a negative comment.) :D

For MySQL, there are three popular Simplied Chinese characterset, namely, gb2312_chinese_ci, gbk_chinese_ci, utf8_unicode_ci.

Big5 is for Traditional Chinese character set. So we are not talking about big5_chinese_ci here.

In the /inc/_core/model/db/_db.class.php, three sets related characterset mappings are provided,

"gb2312" => "gb2312",
"gbk" => "gbk",
"utf-8" => "utf8",

Utf-8 acutally is a subset for many non-latin languages such as "utf8_czech_ci", "utf8_swedsh_ci", "utf8_turkkish_ci", "utf8_unicode_ci". The list goes on. Notice that there is no "utf8_chinese_ci" since "unicode" contains Chinese, Japanese, Korean characters already. To connect to database using those character sets, yes, "utf-8" will work.

On the other hand, as you can tell, since utf8 covers many languages, then a translation file for UTF-8 Chinese should be different from a translation file for UTF-8 Turkish. Right?

And that's why in the b2e installation page, there are two locales provided for Simplified Chinese character sets, zh_CN and zh_CN_utf-8. And these two locles are provided in the /conf/_locales.php file as well, although zh_CN_utf-8 was not enabled by default.

And my testing shows it is ok to use zh_CN locale setting for database using gbk character set.

And to add more confusion, actually zh_CN_utf-8 actually support almost all characters in the big5. Therefore, zh_CN_utf-8 should be the best choice for a new installation, if it is possible.

guizi6 did you check if everything is readable in my blog?

On the other hand, as you can tell, since utf8 covers many languages, then a translation file for UTF-8 Chinese should be different from a translation file for UTF-8 Turkish. Right?

Yes, but both have the same value for charset (utf-8).

sam2kb wrote:

Welcome to my Chinese blog ;) http://ru.b2evo.net/dev/cvs/
Open zh_CN_utf-8/LC_MESSAGES/messages.po in text editor and set charset=utf-8 (not zh_CN_utf-8) then extract _global.php again that's it.

Oh my god. ;-) I know what you mean now. You are talking about the "charset" labels in the messages.po file. I did mis-label it as I can recalled now. But I don't think the "extract" process look into it. My zh_CN is also mislabelled although it works as well. I will fix this.

sam2kb, could you please do me a favor by doing another installation testing? If you can

1. Set your db's collation to "GB2312" or "GBK",
2. Download my zh_CN pack above,
3. Make the same change to /conf/_locales.php file in the same way as you did for the utf8 installation, that is, use "utf-8" and "utf8" in those two lines.

Mislabelling of charset in the messages.po file is something I need to fix. (I did notice that error when I use poedit.exe to view my messages.po file. But at that time, I didn't know what's wrong.) But for the installation and actual use, it should be ok. ;-)

Yes, it is perfect as far I can tell.

Some users have problem in the backoffice screen. Can you see the evobar, ie, the top grey bar, displayed properly in the back end? (Be sure you test with both IE and Firefox.)

Please down load my zh_CN again, which still contains wrong "charset" label but should work for installation and testing. See my previous message.

Thanks, Sam2kb.

sam2kb wrote:

guizi6 did you check if everything is readable in my blog?

On the other hand, as you can tell, since utf8 covers many languages, then a translation file for UTF-8 Chinese should be different from a translation file for UTF-8 Turkish. Right?

Yes, but both have the same value for charset (utf-8).

But I don't think the "extract" process look into it.

Well, you don't have to extract it again just open it and edit the charset Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Some users have problem in the backoffice screen.

Not me :), everything is Chinese

I'll try GBK charset.

EDIT: use admin/demopass to check whatever you want there

i am gonna have to interfere just to say; trust sam2kb, he is good in this localization issues (:, i knew he could help..

sam2kb, Thanks for access to the backoffice. It's perfect, too. Now just waiting for your GBK test.

trust sam2kb, he is good in this localization issues (:, i knew he could help..

Thanks, but I'm not that good. I tried GB2312 and it displays questions, but db is fine and there is Chinese text. I also tried to install Turkish ISO-8859-9 a few days ago and got nothing good as well.

Here is what I think, if you don't want to play with db, connection charset, io charset, and other settings just use UTF-8.

I use utf-8 in my Russian site and never suggest users to use the most popular Russian charset windows-1251 because you will get nothing but troubles.

sam2kb wrote:

trust sam2kb, he is good in this localization issues (:, i knew he could help..

Thanks, but I'm not that good. I tried GB2312 and it displays questions, but db is fine and there are Chinese text. I also tried to install Turkish ISO-8859-9 a few days ago and got nothing good as well.

Here is what I think, if you don't want to play with db, connection charset, io charset, and other settings just use UTF-8.

I use utf-8 in my Russian site and never suggest users to use the most popular Russian charset windows-1251 because you will get nothing but troubles.

yep, i still couldnt have the chance to try with iso8859-9, will see what i can do, but i have 'somehow' achieved to use iso8859-9 in the earlier days with no problem by modifying the _formatting.php, the main thing is not to allow 'any' mismatch somewhere i guess..afai concern when there is a mismatch _formatting.php gets involved.. dont know, will see..cheers (:

Thanks Sam2kb. I have tried successfully installing b2e with mysql database in gb2312, gbk, and utf-8 already. Meanwhile, I do get some complains that it won't work one way or another, just as as you run into. Some users are using existing database for b2e, others may live with whatever database they are provided. So while utf8 is the desirable, but I would like to work out other solutions as well.

I will continue to work on that issue even it is not related to the translation.

Thanks to you and EdB. I will give you both a vote!

YAY!

As near as I can tell here, the issue is being resolved through recognition of the problem. It seems the database will work best with a "MySQL charset" that is not the standard thing that shows up with a database, but the translation files (messages.pot, messages.po, _global.php) are talking about charset for the server to think about when building the web page. For my [url=http://wonderwinds.com/translator/]translator blog[/url] to work I had to make sure my database was "UTF_unicode_ci" instead of "latin1_swedish_ci" to store characters properly. That I did by following the 'hack' documented by Afwas here in the Internationalization forum. Independent of that, each language pack needs to have a proper charset value for the line that says "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=something".

So it looks like the problem is fully understood now, and to my way of thinking that means progress will happen. YAY HOORAY!

BTW I understand none of it at all. I'm American, so the default "English" is close enough for me to understand ;)

For whom it may concern, I have updated the language packs for Chinese, both zh_CN and zh_CN-utf-8, with some minor revision. Plus, I have added the several translated statements for tag cloud plugin, Realtagcould, as well.

The download urls remind the same as the first posting for this thread. I may try to another submission this weekend. Thanks.

guizi6 wrote:

For whom it may concern, I have updated the language packs for Chinese, both zh_CN and zh_CN-utf-8, with some minor revision. Plus, I have added the several translated statements for tag cloud plugin, Realtagcould, as well.

The download urls remind the same as the first posting for this thread. I may try to another submission this weekend. Thanks.

Thanks for the update, and thanks for keeping us informed of your progress. I have a very keen interest now in making translations much easier than the process is right now, so I will be playing with your version as soon as time allows. Turkish too, as I see that post has no feedback and deserves some!

BTW I must say you are wasting your time translating plugin text in the core translation file because it won't work - to the best of my understanding. As far as I understand it, each plugin needs to have a _global.php file in "myplugin_plugin/locales/ab_CD/" path for that plugin to be translated. Also the plugin needs to be properly coded in the first place, not that I am saying the two you mentioned are not properly coded. (That is where my translator blog comes in handy: it extracts a messages.pot file from a properly coded plugin, then creates a global.php file from a messages.po file that any translator feels like sharing, and eventually will pre-translate plugins that use a phrase that has already been translated. But not yet - currently it only helps authors create their messages.pot file.)

EdB wrote:

Turkish too, as I see that post has no feedback and deserves some!

actually, i would like to test it entirely for sometime, and publish a one last package but i dont have time remaining from other things, and i find it harder to use softwares in turkish, i can understand english better : P, even the turkish windows sux as turkish technology terminology aint wide enough..

and it's normal that the topic doesnt have respond because thats that's the way (most) Turks are..Our people doesn't like providing feedback or giving support to other people..

recently a guy has inquired about the translation, and i have replied him with a descriptive e-mail and i have finished my words with saying 'please do comment on the topic even if you have problems' but he didnt post to the topic as you may notice : P instead, he had posted to another turkish forum and am writing what he has said: "ungrateful turkish guy :P wrote:

]] "i have found b2evolution turkish here ..blablabla.. I was already gonna translate it but i just found." (yea, i am sure you would... his previously asking topic for a tr translation was moths ago )

:lol:

Hi, EdB, I am not sure what's happened, but it works for me, as you can see from the following image:

http://blogs.vistaview.org/media/blogs/blog/realtagcloud.gif
This is the set up screen for this Real TagCloud. Before translation, all information tags specific for this plugin, in the mid section, are in English.

EdB wrote:

BTW I must say you are wasting your time translating plugin text in the core translation file because it won't work - to the best of my understanding. As far as I understand it, each plugin needs to have a _global.php file in "myplugin_plugin/locales/ab_CD/" path for that plugin to be translated. Also the plugin needs to be properly coded in the first place, not that I am saying the two you mentioned are not properly coded. (That is where my translator blog comes in handy: it extracts a messages.pot file from a properly coded plugin, then creates a global.php file from a messages.po file that any translator feels like sharing, and eventually will pre-translate plugins that use a phrase that has already been translated. But not yet - currently it only helps authors create their messages.pot file.)

[img][/img]

Simply Amazing!

I'm going to write a plugin that uses text that is already translated just to see if I can duplicate this or not, though at this point I suspect it will duplicate. Even though it shouldn't!

EdB, my take is, as long as your plugin uses T_("message_string") structure for your messages, and your message_string happens to be in the _local.php, it will work.

True, more or less. Plugins should be written with $this->T_('word or phrase') for translatability, but then yeah if 'word or phrase' is already translated in a core file translation it'll work for the plugin.

guizi6 wrote:

http://blogs.vistaview.org/media/blogs/blog/zh_CN_utf-8.zip

http://blogs.vistaview.org/media/blogs/blog/zh_CN.zip

hi...

may i knw which one is better? Coz I'm also finding for solution on installing chinese language pack into my blog.

Hi bbpitpit, welcome to the forums!

I don't speak Chinese, but I think UTF-8 is better and you would expect less problems using it rather than any other local encoding. I'm using UTF-8 on 2 Russian blogs including Russian b2evolution project and I have no encoding problems at all.

well, ...as i'm not a good php coder....and i'm not pretty sure about it, do i need to modify the _locale.php files and do the code changes as recommended here? and everything will be done after that?

when I install b2e and change the Regional setting to Chinese(S) utf-8(CN) and navigate away the page, it'll pop up a window message saying that I have not submitted it yet....what's that means?

do i need to modify the _locale.php

Yes, set
$force_io_charset_if_accepted = 'utf-8';
$db_config['connection_charset'] = 'utf8';

when I install b2e and change the Regional setting to Chinese(S) utf-8(CN) and navigate away the page, it'll pop up a window message saying that I have not submitted it yet....what's that means?

You must click Save button to apply changes.

just a checklist on installing the language pack into my blog:

other than changes in _local.php

any other files that need to change as well?

any other files that need to change as well?

It's enough to change _locales.php, but don't forget to set MySQL connection collation and database charset to utf-8 BEFORE installing b2evo.

what if I already installed the b2e before doing all this changes?? :-/

.... |-| ....i need to re-install my database???? where to change the mySQL collation?

If you have nothing important in DB, just drop tables and install b2evo again.
If you want to save posts follow these instructions http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?t=13366

where to change the mySQL collation?

On the main page when you log in phpMyAdmin, if you don't have phpMyAdmin find something like MySQL connection collation option.

thanks to sam2kb and others that provide guidelines to change blog language...

here's my blog (just setup) : http://i-dreams.net63.net/

Thanks.....!!!

Thanks for this information