Creating a new Confluence Translation

If you would like to translate Confluence into your local language, follow the instructions below on creating a language pack plugin from an example.

The Confluence community is sharing their in-progress and complete translations. You should check that a shared translation to your target language has not already been started here.

Preparation

Start by checking out the technical overview of a Language Pack Plugin. Once you are familiar with the structure and content of a plugin, you can move on to creating your own:

1. Check that you have the latest version of Confluence here. If not, you are recommended to install the latest version for translation, though you can use any version newer than 2.2. Refer to the guide on upgrading Confluence for instructions.
2. If you do not already have Apache Ant installed, download the latest version and setup your environmental variables according to the manual
3. If you are using Confluence 2.2.0 only, you will need to unzip the language plugin base files from languages.zip into a subdirectory of <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY> called languages

Modifying The Example Language Pack Settings

This example will work from an example plugin en_AU.zip. (or better:  UPDATED Confluence 3.2 ConfluenceActionSupport.properties )

1. Unzip the example en_AU language pack en_AU.zip into a subdirectory of <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/languages called en_AU. Note that is the file is just a renamed copy of default English properties file
2. We will now update the properties file in the example to the latest version. Open your Confluence install directory and copy the confluence\WEB-INF\classes\com\atlassian\confluence\core\ConfluenceActionSupport.properties file to the example plugin directory src\etc\com\atlassian\confluence\core.
3. Remove the old ConfluenceActionSupport_en_AU.properties file, and rename ConfluenceActionSupport.properties to ConfluenceActionSupport_en_AU.properties.

4. Locate the plugin descriptor file, ConfluenceActionSupport properies file and flag image

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   <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/languages/en_AU/src/etc/atlassian-plugin.xml
   <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/languages/en_AU/src/etc/com/atlassian/confluence/core/ConfluenceActionSupport_en_AU.properties
   <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/languages/en_AU/src/etc/templates/languages/en_AU/en_AU.png

5. Detemine your language plugin key <KEY> using your country and locale according to the Language Module guide

6. Atlassian has licensed a set of flags for use with translations. Delete en_AU.png and download the appropriate flag from Language Pack Flags, renaming it to the correct key
7. Update atlassian-plugin.xml to contain the relevant <KEY> and other references, including image type. Refer to the first section from the above Language Module for help on deciding what to modify

8. Rename the directory structure and filenames that contain en-AU to your own <KEY>. The directory should now appear as

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   <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/languages/<KEY>/src/etc/atlassian-plugin.xml
   <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/languages/<KEY>/src/etc/com/atlassian/confluence/core/ConfluenceActionSupport<KEY>.properties
   <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/languages/<KEY>/src/etc/templates/languages/<KEY>/<KEY>.png

   NOTE: You are now ready to build the plugin with the default English text to check that your setup is are correct. These next few steps deploy the default English version of the pack under your own language

9. From the command line, go to <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/languages and execute

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   ant -Dlanguage=<KEY> build

10. Copy <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/plugins/<KEY>/dist/languages-<KEY>.jar to <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/confluence/WEB-INF/lib

11. Restart Confluence
12. From your browser, login as an Administrator, then go to Administration -> Language and verify that you are able to select the translation

Updating The Language Pack

To collaborate on the translation process, you may wish to upload your translation to the Community Translations page. Repeat these instructions to test each iteration of your translation attempt.

1. Unzip excelbundle0.9.zip to your local drive.
2. Browse to your Confluence install and go to the \confluence\WEB-INF\classes\com\atlassian\confluence\core directory. Copy the ConfluenceActionSupport.properties file there into the translation_tool directory and rename it to ConfluenceActionSupport_en.properties.
3. If you want to start a fresh translation, skip this step. To work from an existing translation, copy it into the translation_tool directory and remove any country variant from the filename, eg ConfluenceActionSupport_ru_RU.properties becomes ConfluenceActionSupport_ru.properties.

4. Call the translation tool to create the spreadsheet file. For example, to create a Russian translation, open a terminal window in the translation_tool directory and call

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   java -jar excelbundle.jar -export translation_ru.xls -l en,ru -r "%cd%"

5. Edit the file content, referring to Translating ConfluenceActionSupport Content for more information on how to modify the string values.

6. Call the translation tool to export the updates back into the localised properties file. For the example Russian translation, open a terminal window, go to the translation_tool directory and call

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   java -jar excelbundle.jar -import translation_ru.xls -l ru -r "%cd%"

7. Once you have completed editing, you must copy and rename the localised translation back to the language plugin directory. For frequent updates, you may wish to create a script to do this.

8. To view the updates after copying across the new properties file, select the language plugin for your translation, then restart Confluence and refresh your browser.

Building The Language Pack Plugin

To build the new language pack plugin, execute Ant in the confluence\src\etc\languages directory:

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ant -Dlanguage=<LANGUAGE> build

A JAR will be created in the languages/<LANGUAGE>/dist/ folder.

Installation On A Confluence Server

To install the translation in another instance of Confluence.

1. Copy languages-<KEY>.jar into the <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/confluence/WEB-INF/lib of your target installation
2. Restart Confluence
3. From your browser, login as an Administrator, then go to Administration -> Language and select the translation

Submitting A Translation (Optional)

If you would like to share your completed translation with other Confluence users, you can upload it here.

By providing Atlassian permission to bundle complete translations with the Confluence install you will soon be able to select your local language from the Confluence translations list under System Administration, without needing to package it as a plugin.