I was recently developing a few sites that needed to be in multiple languages. Searching online I found things such as using PO files, php-gettext PHP library and the https://POedit.net application, however they fell short of extracting the text that I could easily add to a PHP and JS script as an array. This applied to both the original language (English in my case) and any translated files.
The translation part is done manually using google translate or https://www.deepl.com/translator. This could be automated with an API from both those or even the new ChatGPT that's taking the tech world by storm.
I have also included an example of the functions I used in both PHP and JS.
To make the development process easier, whenever a piece of text needs an associated translated version, wrap the text in a function call.
This avoids having to think about translations and translation files until you are done with writing code using the base language first e.g. English
Add both the JS function call (called translatetext.js) plus INCLUDE location.php, get_language.php and set_language.php to your scripts before any calls to TranslateText. This should be say in your PHP header script, maybe just after you have decided which language to show for the user. Add the PHP script first followed by the JS script.
a. PHP examples
```
<button onclick="SelectPackage('2'); return false;" type="button" class="btn btn-primary" style="width:100%; margin-top:15px; color:#000; font-weight:bold; font-size:1.5rem;"><?=TranslateText('Order Now')?></button>
```
and if you have images with text in different languages, use this simple trick ...
```
<img src="images/<?=TranslateText('banner_EN.png')?>" class="img img-responsive" style="width:80%;">
```
In English, the value could be 'banner_EN.png' and in say Spanish could be something like 'banner_ES.png'
b. JS example
```
errorMsg = TranslateText('Select ONE item from the list above');
```
Once you have all your translatable texts wrapped in a function call, the next stage is to run the extract_lang.php.
First, upload and amend the script changing lines 5-9 as necessary for your project. It should be in the root of your public folder, so it can read all files in that directory and all sub-directories.
Now open the script in your browser, once done it shows a summary of what it has produced: -
59 translations pre-loaded
Done. 5 translations extracted
Translation Function: TranslateText
PHP array file: lang/en.inc.php
Text only file: en_messages.txt
You can use the Text only file as the source to use in the manual translations at google or deepl.
The extraction process caters for you using single or double quotes in the function calls.
If your text contains a single quote, then you need to escape them in both PHP and JS instances, regardless if you wrap the text in single or double quotes.
Examples
```
const msg1 = TranslateText('That\'s a beautiful view');
const msg2 = TranslateText("Where\'s the appointment book?");
```
```
$button1 = TranslateText('Where\'s your piece of mind');
$button2 = TranslateText("Where\'s your coat");
```
To have words displayed in BOLD, you can wrap the text with '*## ' and '##* ' respectively. Note the space character that is needed in both.
Example: Here is an example of some bold text inside a translation, which will show 'beautiful' in bold:
const msg1 = TranslateText('That's a *## beautiful ##* view');
This process reads a translated messages file that you produced at google or deepl.com for example, and creates a new language file.
If you have specific translations for any images, double-check them as sometimes it translates the image names as well.
upload_lang.php can be run with a parameter declaring the language of the input messages file.
E.g. upload_lang.php?lang=es
By default with the existing code, it will then read the base language file of 'lang/en.inc.php' and the input messages file 'es_messages.txt'
If both files exist and contain the same number of translations, it continues to create the new language file, outputting a summary when done.
59 base translations pre-loaded
59 message translations pre-loaded
Base language template: lang/en.inc.php
Input Messages File: es_messages.txt
New Messages File: lang/es.inc.php
Done
convert_document.php reads a whole TXT file, wraps each line in a function call and creates a new file as the output.