J1.5:Technical Guidelines for Translation

The "J1.5" namespace is an archived namespace. This page contains information for a Joomla! version which is no longer supported. It exists only as a historical reference, it will not be improved and its content may be incomplete and/or contain broken links.

Translations for Joomla! have a number of technical requirements and guidelines.

For Joomla 2.5.x see Making a Language Pack for Joomla

Requirements and Guidelines for Language Packs

All ini files need to be saved as UTF-8 - No BOM.

See How to create a language pack

See Joomla Translation Policy Joomla! Translation Policy

See also Typical Language File Headers

Requirements and Guidelines for Sample Data

Sample data are created by exporting tables from a Joomla! database to a file called sample_data.sql.

Requirements and Guidelines for Help Screens

Help Screens are the screens that will be displayed after pushing the 'Help' button at the Back-end screens. The official Help Screens are hosted from {{subst:sitename}} through a proxy at http://help.joomla.org/proxy. You can set up your own helpserver, in order to provide the Help Screens in your own language at the following way:

• Download the Help Screens sql package from JoomlaCode here: http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/docman/?subdir=6
  • Choose the newest sql file for Joomla! 1.5, probably Joomla15HelpScreens2008-07-14.zip.
  • Apply the sql file to the Joomla! site which will act like the helpserver
  • Note: it is not possible to create a helpserver of a non-Joomla! site, eg a MediaWiki site. However, this will be possible in Joomla! 1.6.
• Translate the Help Screen files from the package
• To set the helpserver, search the file /administrator/help/helpsites-15.xml, which looks like this:

<joshelp>
<sites>
<site tag="en-GB" url="http://help.joomla.org">English (GB) - help.joomla.org</site>
</sites>
</joshelp>

• Add an extra line with the information of your own helpserver, like this:

<joshelp>
<sites>
<site tag="en-GB" url="http://help.joomla.org">English (GB) - help.joomla.org</site>
<site tag="languagetag" url="http://yourhelpserver.com">Language (Shortened version of language) - Site URL</site>
</sites>
</joshelp>

• Where:
  • languagetag should be replaced by the language tag of your language. Examples: en-GB, de-DE, nl-NL
  • http://yourhelpserver.com should be replaced by the URL to your Joomla! site which acts like the helpserver
  • Language (Shortened version of language) should be replaced by the full name of the language, followed by the last 2 letters of the language tag. Examples: English (GB), Deutsch (DE), Nederlands (NL)
  • Site URL should be replaced by the URL to the creator or community which maintains the helpserver. This does not have to be the same as the helpserver URL.
• Save the file afterwards

You can provide this file (or include it in a patch) to the potentional users of the helpserver. They can set the helpserver to your translated version at the Back-end of their Joomla! site, at the Global Configurations. Go to the System tab and select the correct helpserver from the dropdown at Helpserver. Note that pushing the 'refresh' button causes that the helpserver xml file will be resetted, and thus the added helpserver be deleted.

Requirements and Guidelines for Localised Distributions

Help Screens

If you want to include your helpserver and set it as default, you should perform the following actions.

• Edit the helpserver-15.xml file as described at Requirements and Guidelines for Help Screens
• Change the default $helpurl at the configuration.php-dist to your helpserver URL.
  • Like this: change var $helpurl = 'http://help.joomla.org'; to var $helpurl = 'http://yourhelpserver.com';
• Search for this file \installation_\localise.xml and add your own helpserver between the <helpurl> and </helpurl> tags.