I hope people will agree with me on this!

When someone comes to our wiccle site right, have it detect the Ip and translate the language from the browser there using so theres no messing around with the code at all

when they regsiter they would need to select there flag and then automatically wiccle would detect from the flag once logged into the wiccle site it would display in there language everything ... this would be awesome and from the IP the wiccle would be able to translate automatically for all users using the google translator or what ever method is easy to intergrate, maybe markus you would know a easy way of doing this in the code.

this part I saw on the net another site using this method

The string would have to be constructed using a "Prefix" a "Separator" and a "Suffix". All those variables should be configurable in our admin panel.

Example with the default values of :
Prefix = (*[
Separator = |
Suffix = ]*)

If the string, on a english/french is :
(*[This is the portion that would be displayed in english.|Ceci est la portion qui sera affichée en français.]*)

In english it will display :
This is the portion that would be displayed in english.

In french it will display :
Ceci est la portion qui sera affichée en français.

I am in general not in favor of automatic language-detection and translation... Being a foreigner in a foreign country for a great deal of my life, ip-based automatic location detection has been a major pain in the rear-end. If a Swiss person logs in, should he be served German, French, or Italian? Or if you're out for a vacation on Pattaya, would you like to get your iWiccle in Thai, and start figuring out how to change the language?

I still get Danish newsletters from Apple, because once upon a time when I registered somewhere it assumed I was a Dane. I don't want to even get started with programs that also do the same with user-interfaces (some presenting me with Danish, as the OS is in Danish, and some in Finnish, because that's the default input language ---- I just want English, please!).

So yes, if this were built in, there would have to be a clear place for switching user language --- specified as "language choice", not a "where are you from -- we'll be helpful" sort of thing. This will be there in either case, once we have a few language packs ready.

As far as automated translations go, they still come across quite sloppy, though frequently hilarious. For what I have seen, they are not at all comparable to proper translations, and are often quite confusing. In either case, they are still unpredictable.

This is why we have language packs proper that will provide exact and clear translations for all necessary areas. Every language unit is configurable from the language files, and has been separated from the templates.

All that said, I'm sure such a service could be rigged in, if there were demand. However, before anyone requests that, I'd like you to go grab a site and have it automatically translated into a language you understand, and see if it's really something you want to present your users with, considering we're talking about user interface language, which should be clear and precise...

I strongly agree with Markus. Automatic translations are very messy. Languages are too rich in means and what seems to be a clear translation could have no sense at all. If anybody need a good example, take Portuguese: from Portugal do Brazil to Cabo Verde and so on, each one has its own specific meaning for so much words and language structures that we almost need a translation (and subtitles to DVD).

I got lots of Google translated pages when I surf so I can talk about it - don't even think about it! Perhaps could be ok to some languages but I doubt.

What I think could be done is using only one language file. Most project use GNU gettext...

The reason why the language strings are in separate files is twofold:

1. When language strings of a particular type are in one dedicated place, it's quicker to reach them for editing. At an application of this size, the only way to keep things manageable is clear separation of areas. The division of language into several files is just an extension of this.

2. Some language strings (such as the countries listing) are only required in some situations, and are loaded on-demand --- which is not possible if everything is in one file.

3. Each module uses its own language sheet for module-specific namings (e.g. post / photo / link - they all use the same machinery, just different names) areas (lang_module_*.php), which need to be loaded separately.

Along with the lang_module_deriv.php file that generates sentences with these variable names, this cuts out a lot of overhead from duplicate writing. You don't need to separately translate "Latest posts", "Latest photos", "Latest links", "Latest this & that" -- you just provide the words to be replaced into the sentences in each module.

That said, language packs are still in beta and joining some (about 10) of the files together is of course possible, if you think that'd make a difference. The amount of language is still quite manageable, and merging the mergeable wouldn't create too much trouble at all. Next version! =)

Markus, I'm sure you have good reasons to make specific languages files; I'm not a coder really and it's possible I'm taking a superficial view of the problem. BUT, as you said "the amount of languages is still quite manageable" so I feel now it's the best moment to give a good tought about this topic. Why, I think and hope iWiccle will grow fast and then would be hell to make mends in an inefficient system.

Warning: if I correctly understand lang_module_deriv.php file use, there'll be problem with translations from languages with strong gender differentiation; English has almost no problem with this but other languages, especially those derived from Latin (like Portuguese, French and Spanish) make intensive use of differentiation and "Latest" (using your example) need a grammatical gender translation. Sorry, I think my text is too much a "teacher's text" but that is a difficult subject to explain in a foreign language :( And no - I'm not a Languages teacher; in fact I teach History...

Anyway, I am only insisting on this subject because I believe that iWiccle may quickly become a large international community if you providing satisfactory solutions to different types of languages. I has also followed in other projects, the terrible task of changing the system of translation in a mature product with thousands of users, very angry users I can say.

I would say that languages would be one of the most important things a script can offer to its clients cause you and me as the webmaster living on this earth know that you need the script to talk in the language of the people on your site from where you are and the tongue we were brought up with

Right, it does get more complex with languages that make use of suffixes instead of pre- and postpositions. The derivation feature can't be used in sentence context, then --- they'll just have to be written out individually. I'll have to go over the language files and see what needs to be specified, and what abstracted.

I suppose if I go over it in terms of how it'd work in French, we get a pretty good overall covering of Romance languages? I don't really know Portuguese at all. I have some idea of Spanish and Italian, and I studied six years of French back in the days.

I appreciate linguistic precision very much, no worries there --- the smoother and more polished the language, the better!

bienvenue chez wiccle

french is a language used where I live but my mother tongue is english of course.

Ulalá!

Just to make things a bit more cloudy: beyond the existence of gender differentiation there are many differences in the grammatical classification of genera among different languages. The same word can be classified as masculine ( a "he" thing), feminine ( a "she" thing) or neutral ( a "thing" thing????). I know there are several differences in how Portuguese, Spanish, French and German classifie the same thing - this is why foreigners seem to talk so funny to these people.

I'll research about translations systems (what options are, what other projects do, what regular internet user think, etc) and then I'll post about, ok?  I've used GNU getText system and found it really handy but that was some time ago. Maybe there's best options now.