Contributing the new language translation to BigBlueButton

We are myGengo to make contributing/updating a translation easy for BigBlueButton community.

To help translate BigBlueButton into your language, do the following.

1. Create an account on myGengo.com.
2. Click the Request Access button on the BigBlueButton page.
3. Send an e-mail to Marcos Calderon (mcmarkos86 at gmail dot com) requesting access to modify BigBlueButton language strings myGengo.

The last step is needed as sometimes the Request Access process doesn't work. Marcos will add you as an editor and you can then update the language strings. If you want to localize BigBlueButton into a new language, let Marcos know in your e-mail.

As the translations are updated by the community, we will sync them with locale so they get into master.

If you have any questions, please post to bigbluebutton-dev.

NOTE: If the language you are looking for is not available on the localization server, post on the BigBlueButton Mailing List.

Technical Background

BigBlueButton localization follows the i18n standard. BigBlueButton Client will detect the locale of the language of the browser running it and attempt to load that language file.

Language files are compiled into swf files and loaded dynamically based on the browser locale. This reduces the size of the client. Language codes follow the convention of a two letter lowercase language name, followed by an underscore, followed by two upper-case latters signifying the country code. So for example the default english for the United States would be: en_US

Compiling your own language files into your client

If you created a custom language file but do not wish to contribute back to the project, here are the instructions on how to compile the language files yourself.

1. Put the template file into a new folder. The folder name should follow the language code convention stated above for the language/country the language file is written for. Put the folder under bigbluebutton-client/locale.
2. The file will be loaded whenever the user's broswer is set to that language/country code. Optionally, you could overwrite the english language files if you think that most of your users are running english language broswers, but would still like them to load a specific language.

1. Finally you will need to edit the build.xml file in the bigbluebutton-client root directory. Edit AVAILABLE_LOCALES to include your language files. Just follow the examples already there.

   <property name="AVAILABLE_LOCALES" value="az_AZ,de_DE,el_GR,en_US,es_ES,es_LA,fr_FR,hu_HU,it_IT,lt_LT,nb_NO,nl_NL,pl_PL,pt_BR,pt_PT,ro_RO,ru_RU,tr_TR,vi_VN,zh_CN,zh_TW"/>

Once you are done editing the file, you can rebuild the client. Go to the client source directory - on the VM usually /home/firstuser/dev/bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton-client/, and run the command

   ant locales

To have the client load your locale, you need to add it to the locales.xml located in resources/prod folder.

http://github.com/bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton/blob/master/bigbluebutton-client/resources/prod/locales.xml

Refer to the FAQ if you have problems with Ant and Flex

Testing your localization

There is a Firefox plug-in, "Quick Locale Switcher", that can be used for testing the localizations. The plug-in is available here. When this plug-in is installed, you will have a menu at the bottom right hand corner that allows you to change the locale in the browser.

Overwriting the English Translation with your Language

If you think most of your users are running browsers set for English but would still like BigBlueButton to load with a different language, you can delete the en_US.swf file from the directory where you deployed the bbb-client. Then rename your localization to en_US.swf. So for example if you wanted the Spanish language to be the default, just rename the file es_ES.swf to en_US.swf.