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This post has been written by Pete Coutts, the project leader of Joomla.ch. If you have something interesting, that you would like to share on GoodWebPractices.com please get in touch
with us about making a guest post.
Did you know that i18n stands for Internationalization? The 18 in i18n stands for the number of letters between the i and the n in internationalization
First off, I would like to thank David and Alex for giving me the opportunity to make a guest post here at GoodWebPractices. I have had something on my mind that I think is important for you all to know...
Joomla and i18n?
Since the early Joomla days some of you might remember, there were lots of complaints because the backend could not be switched into other languages. Many of the English speaking audience might never have thought about this! The issue was that the Joomla backend had no language files; so everything had to be translated within the code which was no easy task. Fortunately, this was solved with the release of Joomla! 1.5 because it comes with 45 available installation languages.
Why did I raise the issue of internationalization and Joomla?
There are a huge number of Joomla related blogging sites out there. Most of the authors who write interesting blogs write in English. Some of you bloggers have chosen to licence your work and although this is understandable, have you thought about those who don't understand English? At the end of the day, it's your hard work and you are the copyright holder of your work, but let me just ask you one question:
Why would you not allow people to translate your work into other languages to make your information available to even more users?
Now that Joomla 1.5 supports 45 languages, we can expect the use of Joomla to have a larger international following. If you are a Joomla blogger, my challenge to you is this: consider allowing people to translate your websites articles if they provide a back link to the original post.
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May 23, 2008
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