A software blog

It seems like many people which are considering the use of wordpress mu for their own purposes are looking for a localized version and don’t find one. This is probably a testament to the huge world wide popularity of wordpress and the free nature of it and its associated products (thems, plugins, localizations) that people have become used to expect that everything which is related to the wordpress brand name will be available and free.

So what are the reasons it is hard to find wordpress mu localizations although there are several wordpress mu based site all over the world?

1. There are much less people which use MU then the single blog version. This means that there are less candidates for doing the not very exiting task of translation.
2. People which actually use MU are often motivated by gaining some profit from their installations. Giving the translation for free might help possible competition.
3. Many sites are targeting a specific niche and tweak the core code for their purposes. Translation of those sites might differ from the expected result.
4. MU system usually host several blogs. Since an upgrade will require a coordination with the bloggers and many tests to assure that the themes and plugins work as expected in the new version, upgrades are delayed as much as possible. This means that a running MU site is very likely to be using a previous version and will not be interested in translating the bleeding edge versions.

I am sure that as MU becomes a more mature product, and gain more installers those reasons will go away, but what do you care about the future when you need the translation now, so here an explanation on what is quickest way to translate it by your self.

1. Get the source code probably from here. If you intend to made changes in the default themes, then there is probably no point in tranlating them at this moment, and you can remove the themes directory (wp-content/themes), in the hope that this will save some work.
2. Get a translation tool which can be used on your platform. You can use the same translation tools which are used for the translation of wordpress.
3. Get the latest localized version of wordpress for your language.
4. Locate the .po file which hopefully is included with the localized wordpress version (if you can not find one, try to contact the translator), and copy it for convenience, to the root directory of the MU source. Open it, find and change the path setting if needed to the path of the MU source, and run the update functionality.
5. If you are using the poEdit tool on windows you will get a table with rows colored as blue, yellow or white. The white rows contain translations inherited from the localized wordpress and there is no need to change them. The yellow ones contain fuzzy translation (translation based on similar phrases found in the translated rows). The blue rows, don’t contain any translation.
6. Now you need to actually translate it. As this is a boring task which might take several hours I advice that you go to a quite place in which no one will bother you and get you out of the zone. My experience is that it is better to try and translate as many stings in the initial attempt, as this is a boring task you will not like to repeat.
7. After the translation was completed generate a .mo file (in the case of poEdit it involves a simple save).
8. Install the MU. Change the value of the WPLANG variable in the wp-config.php file to your locale. Upload the .mo file to the wp-include/languages directory (don’t forget to rename it if needed to {your locale}.mo).
9. Now its time for the iterative task of testing, debugging and testing again. For each string which you need to fix you should open the .po file with the translation tool if it supports search, or with a text editor, located the offending string and change it. Then you should use your translation tool to generate a new .mo file, upload it and try again.
10. The order I have followed is to test the process of blog and users creation and deletion first, and then I have created a blog and checked that its admin panel have the right text in all places. I have decided not to fix any errors at the site admin panels as I am going to be the administrator of the site and the mistakes were not annoying enough.
11. Now all that is left to do is to find nice themes and plugins that your users will love to use, and localize them. Since the process of localizing themes and plugins was discussed in many places and languages on the web I will not go into it.