This documentation relates to the latest version of Confluence.
If you are using an earlier version, please go to the documentation home page and select the relevant version.

Language Pack Plugins

Added by Jeremy Higgs, last edited by Sarah Maddox on Jul 19, 2007  (view change)
All Versions
Click for all versions
Confluence 2.9 Documentation

Index

To run Confluence in another language, you must install a language pack plugin for that translation. Guides and tools for collaboratively creating translations have been made available to the Confluence community.

This page provides a technical overview of plugins, for users interested in creating or updating a translation. To install a translation, check out Community Translations.

Translations for the Rich Text Editor can be part of a Confluence language pack plugin.

Language Pack Overview

Language plugins are placed in the <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/languages/<KEY> directory, where <KEY> is the international language identifier. They consist of three files:

Name Purpose Filename Location
Language Plugin Descriptor Defines language settings in language tag atlassian-plugin.xml ./src/etc
ConfluenceActionSupport Properties File Contains text strings in key:value mapping ConfluenceActionSupport<KEY>.properties ./src/etc/com/atlassian/confluence/core
Flag Image Contains flag image for country <KEY>.png ./src/etc/templates/languages/<KEY>

Directory Structure

The location of the three files that compose a Language Pack plugin is as follows:

./src/etc/com/atlassian/confluence/<PATH_OF_PROPERTIES_FILE>
./src/etc/templates/languages/<LANGUAGE_KEY>/<LANGUAGE_KEY>.gif
./src/etc/atlassian-plugin.xml

As an example, this is the directory listing of the German translation ("de_DE"):

./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/atlassian-plugin.xml
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/com
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/com/atlassian
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/com/atlassian/confluence
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/com/atlassian/confluence/core
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/com/atlassian/confluence/core/ConfluenceActionSupport_de_DE.properties
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/templates
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/templates/languages
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/templates/languages/de_DE
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/templates/languages/de_DE/de_DE.gif

Language Plugin Structure

The three components of a plugin must be updated for each translation. The following sections describe updating the language plugin descriptor, flag image and ConfluenceActionSupport properties file.

Defining The Language Plugin Descriptor

This is an example atlassian-plugin.xml file for a Language Pack plugin for German:

<atlassian-plugin name='German language pack' key='confluence.languages.de_DE'>
	<plugin-info>
		<description>This plugin contains translations for the German language</description>
		<vendor name="Atlassian Software Systems" url="http://www.atlassian.com"/>
		<version>1.0</version>
	</plugin-info>

	<language name="German" key="de_DE" language="de" country="DE">
		<!-- Define a flag that will be shown for this language -->
		<resource name="de_DE.gif" type="download" location="templates/languages/de_DE/de_DE.gif">
			<property key="content-type" value="image/gif"/>
		</resource>
	</language>
</atlassian-plugin>

Language Plugin Descriptor Attributes

The atlassian-plugin.xml file declares the language being bundled using the following attributes:

Attribute Description Required
language
The language being defined
Yes
country
The country the language belongs to
No
variant
The variant of the language
No

These values are based off those defined in the java.util.Locale class. For information on the valid values for the language, country and variant attributes, please see the java.util.Locale documentation.

The key attribute is an aggregation of the the three previous attributes, in the same format as that of java.util.Locale: language[_country][_variant]

Flag Images

Language packs define a flag that is to be used to represent the language. The atlassian-plugin.xml defines the language property:

<resource name="en_AU.gif" type="download" location="templates/languages/en_AU/en_AU.gif">
	<property key="content-type" value="image/gif"/>
</resource>

When selecting a language, the flag defined above will be displayed. Additionally, the flag will appear during the setup process.

ConfluenceActionSupport Properties File

This Java Properties file contains key-value pairs for each string in Confluence, and supports variables. For example:

remove.all.name=Remove All
view.mail.thread.desc.full=Entire Thread (Showing {0} of {1})

Labels:

plugin plugin Delete
configuration configuration Delete
language language Delete
internationalisation internationalisation Delete
confluence confluence Delete
confluence22 confluence22 Delete
Enter labels to add to this page:
Wait Image 
Looking for a label? Just start typing.

Comments (13)

 

  1. Apr 18, 2006

    David Peterson says:

    Does this mean that language packs can't be uploaded? That would be unfortunate....

    Does this mean that language packs can't be uploaded? That would be unfortunate...

  2. Apr 19, 2006

    didier says:

    Is atlassian going to provide with Offtheshelf languages? French is our top prio...

    Is atlassian going to provide with Off-the-shelf languages?

    French is our top priority.

    1. Oct 22, 2007

      Matt Ryall says:

      Confluence is shipping with German and French language packs as of 2.6.0.

      Confluence is shipping with German and French language packs as of 2.6.0.

  3. Apr 28, 2006

    Bert Chen says:

    FYI, There is a utility to help translate between property files more quickly.

    FYI,

    There is a utility to help translate between property files more quickly.

    http://www.javasharing.com/javasharing/web/guest/properties_editor

  4. Apr 28, 2006

    Chris W says:

    I'd like to help with the translation to French.&nbsp; There are close to 3000 s...

    I'd like to help with the translation to French.  There are close to 3000 strings to translate.  What's the best way to split the work?  No point in 2 people translating the same string twice.

    Suggested workflow - for each new language:

    1. Agree on standard translations for recurring words (i.e. dashboard, space, profile, username) to keep the final translation consistent,
    2. Agree on a list of strings (for example all lines matching regex pattern ^[^ #] in ConfluenceActionSupport.properties) and breaking it down into 20-string units,
    3. Each pick one or more units to translate & commit back to a central repository when done

    Any ideas as to how to get started?  Where could this translation repository be hosted?  I'm not familiar with Subversion but maybe that would be a good tool for the job?

    Thanks for any pointers - let's get Confluence localized!

    Cheers, Chris 

    1. Sep 13, 2006

      Normand Brousseau says:

      Hi Chris,&nbsp; I'd like to help too, and I might even have some time to do so, ...

      Hi Chris, 

      I'd like to help too, and I might even have some time to do so, eventually!

      We already have a repository: an editable running draft of the  French translation is available at  http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DISC/French_FR+Translation&nbsp; - why not start from there?  I think Confluence handles concurrent editing quite well, so we can all add to it when time permits.

      Does this make sense?

      Normand

  5. Dec 13, 2006

    EnBW says:

    There is some confusion about where to place tha language.jar. When copying it t...

    There is some confusion about where to place tha language.jar. When copying it to WEB-INF/lib you cannot switch between the languages.

    Above there are to ways described. Put it to install-dir/languages/ or to install-dir/plugins.

    What is the best way?

  6. Dec 14, 2006

    Mei Yan Chan says:

    Hi Fabian, There shouldn't be a problem if you place the language.jar at WEBINF...

    Hi Fabian,

    There shouldn't be a problem if you place the language.jar at WEB-INF/lib. I would suggest you to place it there and if it doesn't work, can you please raise a support request at https://support.atlassian.com

    Regards,
    Mei

  7. Feb 07, 2007

    Jack Li says:

    Dear All, After I installed a Chinese Language Pack under Confluence 2.3.1 and ...

    Dear All,

    After I installed a Chinese Language Pack under Confluence 2.3.1 and then changed the language to Chinese, the Confluence works correctly except the search function. when I click the search button, Confluence displays nothing but a blank page. If I change the language back to English, the search function works ok.

    The same situation happens no matter I changed the index language to either English or Chinese or CJK, whereas I rebuilt index each time. The pack which I used could work correctly under Confluence 2.2.x, including the search function.

    Anyone can help me? Thanks in advance!

    1. Feb 08, 2007

      Mei Yan Chan says:

      Hi Jack, Can you please raise an issue at our Support system https://support.at...

      Hi Jack,

      Can you please raise an issue at our Support system?

      From there, please attach the Chinese Language Pack (jar file) and I will try to replicate the problem in our system locally. It would be great if you could also provide a zip backup of your <confluence-install>/logs directory. Thanks.

      Regards,
      Mei

      1. Feb 08, 2007

        Jack Li says:

        Hi Mei, I've raised an issue at the Support system. BTW, I couldn't find any lo...

        Hi Mei,

        I've raised an issue at the Support system. BTW, I couldn't find any log file or directory under my confluence installed directory, so I copied some information from the Tomcat window and uploaded a log file created by myself instead.

        Thank you very much.

        Regards,

        Jack

  8. Dec 12, 2007

    Olivia L says:

    Is there a way to have multiple languages for a confluence installation? For exa...

    Is there a way to have multiple languages for a confluence installation? For example, configure a drop-down on the site so that users can choose between languages and have entries and pages with both or multiple language versions of the content.

    Thanks,
    Olivia

    1. Dec 12, 2007

      Choy Li Tham says:

      Hi Olivia, Sorry to say that Confluence does not support this feature. Please r...

      Hi Olivia,

      Sorry to say that Confluence does not support this feature. Please raise a feature request at our JIRA Issue Tracker to reflect your requirement. Thanks.

      Regards,
      Choy Li

Add Comment