Remove default language in Magento - magento

I am in the following bind:
A client wanted 3 languages - English, Russian and Latvian. Naturally, I created 3 store views and changed the language for each. Once I had translated everything via the inline-translate tool, and the client added the products with descriptions in all of the languages,the client had a change of heart, and now wants English to be removed.
Now this is a problem, since it is the default Store view, and can;t be deleted as such. i have thought of just changing the titles and locales of the languages, but that would still leave the product descriptions wrong.
Is there a way to do this, either via DB, or some other way?
TL; DR: How to remove the default store view in Magento?

Try to change "Default Storeview" for your default "Store". Go to "System/Manage Stores", choose your store and change "Default storeview" to Russian or Latvian. Then you could be able to delete English storeview.

Related

Magento Translation

I have Magento 1.8.1.0. Recently I've installed Russian pack, the result wasn't appropriate enough, cause some phrases on frontend remained in English
I know there's handy way to translate Magento using cvs-files.
The question is where I can find proper cvs-file? Does installed theme concerns translation some how? I know I'm asking newbie questions, I've read several posts, but I haven't made up my mind how to translate Magento.
Many thanks in advance.
Hope you are doing well,
As i have gone through your question that you want to translate your websites front end in Russian if user has selected the language Russian.
For this you are required to work out the translate.csv files which will be available in your theme Package.
Example : app/design/frontend/default/SecuareWeb/locale/de_DE
In the locale folder you will find the folder for Russian language open that folder and you will find the file where you are required to add the required translation text in it.
How to add translation text in translate.csv file is given below.
Example:
"This is the demo of translation in Russian","Это демо-трансляции на русском языке"
And one thing i would like add is that make sure your front end .phtml files must contain the text in $this->__("Example");. If you have added all the text like this then only then it will allow you for translation other wise it will not translate a text.
Hope this might be use full to you !!!
Waiting for your valuable comments in regards to your Question !!!
There are different ways to achieve translation in Magento so you can find multiple directory containing static csv files and also a database table.
All the modes have same structure: key/value. For example: "String to translate","String translated".
Inline Translation (database table: core_translate):
following best practices in Magento, you should use inline-translation aka database saved translation in rare cases. It is harder to mantain and can be buggy. It has first precedence, so any translation you do via inline translation will override the other 'modes'.
Theme level Translation (file in app/design/frontend/your_package/your_theme/ru_RU/translate.csv):
you can place any string to be translated in the translate.csv. It has second precedence.
Locale translation (file in app/locale/ru_RU/Module_Name.csv):
the suggested way to do translation as it will keep translation separated by each module and is easier to maintain. For example: Mage_Catalog.csv etc.
Each module in Magento can specify its csv file containing translation and sometimes the same string has different modules trying to translate, so if your translation does not work check between multiple file by a quick editor search. It will be overridden by the two above modes.
Note:
Magento will load all the csv files and build up a giant tree and caches it. So before scratching your head because the string is not translated as you wished in the frontend:
1. clean the cache.
2. check for any same key string which comes after your translated string. For example: in the same csv Line 100 will override Line 1 if the key string are the same.
3. check for any same key string in the mode which has higher precedence. For example: inline translation will override any csv based translated string.
It may be easier for you to go to the admin backend System -> Configuration -> Developer and switch "Translate Inline" "Enabled for Frontend" to "Yes".
Then, refresh the frontend and you can change the translation directly at your web browser.
The translation is saved in the database table core_translate just for the case you want to do it in a test environment and copy the translation later on to the production.
Take care that without client restrictions (System -> Configuration -> Developer) everyone will see the translation options.
btw. You may need to clear the cache and refresh the webpage in order to see your changes.

Do I need English beside Base localization which would contain the exact same 'translation'?

I'd expect the base file to contain my English words since my project has "Localization native development region" set to English.
Update - to clarify my question:
Apart from addressing question what language end-users will see, you need to consider also what will be shown in the AppStore.
My current experience is that if you use Base for English, English won't appear in list of supported languages (how Apple knows in which language your base localization is) in the description of your app.
I've met this issue myself - base (English), German and Russian
Target settings refer to:
Localization native development region = en
But on Appstore it appears in this form:
Languages: German, Russian
no reference to English
I consider to duplicate base localization to English (not a high priority, as users see from screenshots that App works in English anyway)
Edit: there seem to be a different behavior in iOS8 - Application Settings (Settings.bundle) seem to ignore Base translation, if any of translations match your "Preferred Language Order".
In other words, App is localized: Base, German, Russian.
iPhone is configured to use English, preferred languages order is English, German, Russian.
Application settings come in ... German!
Once again: this is applied to Settings only not to the application itself!
Although I am not entirely sure if I get this correctly, I will try to answer your question TTBOMK.
Suppose you’re using NSLocalizedString(key, comment) from in your code. You can clearly see that the first argument is actually is a key for a string, rather than the translated (or to be translated) string itself. Therefore when you “write code” you actually don’t write strings in base language — or any other language for that matter. You should think it as if you're adding string placeholders in your code.
Later on, you’re supposed to create a Localizable.strings file for each language you would like to support, in the form of key = value;. To make your UI appear at least in one humanly–readable language you should at least have one Localizable.strings file with proper string values for each placeholder key.
For example: if you had NSLocalizedString(#“ConfirmationButtonTitle", #“Yada yada”) in your code, then it makes totally sense having a Localizable.strings file that contains ”ConfirmationButtonTitle” = “Tap here to confirm”; element in it. If you don’t create a Localizable.strings file or no Localizable.strings file contain ConfirmationButtonTitle key, then button title falls back to ConfirmationButtonTitle, since it is the name of the placeholder key.
Having said that, most people prefer naming their keys exactly as string values for various reasons. This is arguably a convenient — and very common — practice, but could lead to conflicts in people’s minds.
So, if you were to create the previous NSLocalizedString example like NSLocalizedString(#“Tap here to confirm", #“Yada yada”) instead, then your default/base Localizable.strings file would probably contain an element like “Tap here to confirm” = “Tap here to confirm”;.
What happens here isn’t that you’re repeating yourself, but instead you’re naming your key exactly as your base language’s string value, that’s all.
EDIT
There always have been a base language concept, but as I understand it Xcode 5 emphasizes this even more: that’s good. If your base language is English, then you don’t have to have a Localizable.strings file for English, again.
According to the documentation (scroll down to Creating Strings Files for User-Facing Text in Your Code), you shouldn't add Localizable.strings to the Base localization. Even if your development language is English, create a separate folder and Localizable.strings for English. Create others for each additional language you want to add.
Further reading
Managing Strings Files Yourself
Localizing Your App
Internationalizing the User Interface
iOS Localization Tutorial
Working with Localization in iOS 8 and Xcode 6
What’s new in localization in Xcode 9 and iOS 11

Translating Magento frontend

Is there a way to easily just translate Magento default frontend through csv file, translating everything would be too time consuming and not really needed as it would make admin panel very confusing for me.
Same question was asked in Magento forums 4 years ago, but there was no easy way to do it at that time, but apparently Mangento team was contacted and they promised to look into it. So has anything changed since then?
Look into your /app/locale/en_US folder. There you have .csv's that do the translating. Everywhere you see $this->__('Checkout') or any other string, Magento hits up this folder for specific files that dictate what to replace with "Checkout" and every other string which echo's this way.
In the CSV files, the first field is the text to look for within $this->__(''), the second is what to replace it with. You'll also find different language translation files here.
Each CSV is named after the namespace it belongs to. Hence, Mage_Catalog.csv contains the translations for all the files that use the /app/code/core/Mage/Catalog/ classes and /app/design/frontend/your_package/your_theme/catalog template files.
Here, you'll also find Mage_Adminhtml.csv, which handles most of the admin translations.

magento 1.7 language code issue

I have Magento store (1.7-community) with two store views.
On English side prices look like $999,99. On french side prices look like 999,99 $CA.
I would like to get rid of CA.
in \lib\Zend\Locale\Data\fr_CA.xml
currency pattern looks like this
<pattern>#,##0.00 ¤;(#,##0.00 ¤)</pattern>
I tried changing this and even removing the section. Flushed caches and deleted var/cache. I am not even sure where CA suffix comes from.
But it does not go away.
Is there an over-ride, Is there a database table that can be cleared?
Maybe you have configured the currency wrong? It might be canadian dollars you have now instead of US dollars. Have a look at the configuration.
If the locale of your store view is set to French (France) rather than French (Canada) you will see this. I just stumbled across it because the fr_FR translation is more complete than the fr_CA one and so I often use it instead and didn't consider issues like this.

What are the best practices for multilanguage sites?

I want to make a multi-language site, such that all or almost all pages will be available in 2 or more translations. What are the best practices to follow?
For example, I consider these language selection mechanisms:
Cookie-based selection of the preferred language.
Based on Accept-Language header if the cookie is not set.
Based on GeoIP otherwise (probably).
Is there anything else?
How should different translations be served?
as LANG.example.com/page
as example.com/LANG/page
as example.com/page?hl=LANG
...
any of the above with a redirect to example.com/page? (It seems to be discouraged)
How to ensure that all the translations are properly indexed?
Sitemaps with all pages + correct Content-Language header are enough?
What is the best way to let the users know there are other translations, but do not distract them?
list available languages in the header/footer/sidebar (like Wikipedia)
put “Choose a language” selector next to the content
What is the best policy to deal with missing/outdated translations?
do not display missing pages at all or display a page in a different language?
display old translation, old translation with a warning or a page in a different language?
What else should I take into account? What should I do and what I definitely should not?
In addition to #Quassnoi's answers ensure that you standard RFC 4646 language identifiers (e.g. EN-US, DE-AT); you may already be aware of this. The CLDR project is an excellent repository of internationalization data (the Supplemental Data is really useful).
If a translation of a specific page is not available, use a language fallback mechanism back to the neutral language; for example "DE-AT", "DE", "" (neutral, e.g. "EN").
Most recent browsers and the underlying operating systems will correctly show all of the characters required for a locale selector list if the page is encoded correctly (I'd recommend all pages being UTF-8). Ensure that the locale list contains both the native and current-language names to allow both native and non-native speakers to view the specified translations, e.g. "Deutsch (German)" if the current locale is EN-*.
A lot of sites use a flag icon to show the current locale, but this is more relevant to the location and some people may be offended if you show only a dominant flag (e.g. the US or UK flag for English).
It may be worthwhile to have a more visible (semi-graphical) locale selector on the home page if no locale cookie has been submitted, using a combination of GeoIP and Accept-Language to determine the default locale choice.
Semi-related: if your users are in located in different time zones include a zone preference in their account profile for displaying time values in their local time. And store all time stamps using UTC.
Make the decision whether you need support for languages that require double byte characters early on (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc), Unicode is the preferable choice. It can be tedious to change later, especially if you have a database that doesn't use unicode.
Cookie-based selection of the
preferred language.
Based on Accept-Language header if
the cookie is not set.
These two you should support.
Put a big english banner at the top of your page that reads This page in English.
as example.com/LANG/page
This is the best choice.
LANG.example.com isn't good for autocomplete, and the question marks look ugly.
list available languages in the header/footer/sidebar (like Wikipedia)
Choose a language dropbox is confusing, as it is not intelligible being written in a wrong foreign language and spoils overall impression being written in English.
And you always tend to make the error selecting the language you don't even have fonts for leaving yourself on a page full of question marks.
display old translation with a warning
You know there is something you can read and get the point, but for the details you'd better get a dictionary and read it in English.

Resources