How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

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Sean Moran
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How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by Sean Moran »

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What version of phpBB are you using? phpBB 3.2.0
What is your board's URL? https://www.orbitalorder.com/rum2/index.php
Who do you host your board with? Hosting24
How did you install your board? I used the download package from phpBB.com
What is the most recent action performed on your board? Fresh Install
Is registration required to reproduce this issue? No
Do you have any MODs installed? No
Do you have any extensions installed? YES - 20 (edited).
What styles do you currently have installed? prosilver
What language(s) is your board currently using? en
Which database type/version are you using? MySQL 5
What is your level of experience? Comfortable with PHP and phpBB
What actions did you take (updating your board; installing a MOD, style or extension; etc.) prior to this problem becoming noticeable? I installed all 54 language packs to the new phpBB 3.2.0 forum, not realising that less than half of them are compatible with the latest version.
Please describe your problem. Hello again forum. Thank you for maintaining my account for these past 15 months or so. I do not often require help with phpBB. It is very well-designed.

This week, I have begun work on a new forum using phpBB version 3.2.0, and assuming that there would be some sort of backward-compatibility, attempted to install all 54 language packs. It is only this morning (Friday 9th), after reading up on the 3.2 translation subforum that it has occurred to me that twenty-eight(28) of those language packs are not designed for version 3.2.0.

Being effectively monolingual, I am not sure whether there is some configuration which I might be able to do to each of the twenty-eight(28) language packs which are not compatible with version 3.2.0, but I have some time this month, if it might be possible for one to convert earlier versions of language packs to the 3.2.0 specifications without any knowledge whatsoever of those languages themselves.

Otherwise, my Plan B is to revert to phpBB version 3.1.17, which I am using for the current (dormant) 2016 forum. This would mean seeing that red warning message each time I access the ACP, but I can live with that if I can't toggle it off.

With a planned opening date of October 2017, may I as for the advice of those here who are far more familiar with the developmental timespans than I whether I should persevere with version 3.2.0 in the hope that either myself or someone more proficient will have updated the superseded language packs by the end of September, or would it be a safer bet to revert to version 3.1.17?

Are there any alternatives to these two possible solutuons to my language incompatibilities with version 3.2.0?

I apologise for asking what may in hindsight be a stupid question, but I am reluctant to revert to 3.1.17 and unsure of the lead time for updated language packs, and would need some guidance (possibly reading more) before I can learn how to update the pre-3.2.0 versions.
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Sean Moran
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by Sean Moran »

I guess that there is no simple answer to my problem.

I will build the new forum with 3.1.17 and meanwhile determine the differences to the 3.2 language packs, and then see about adding the required additions to the most important languages as a separate project. THank you for your silence which has explained the situation very clearly. ;)

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KevC
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by KevC »

To be fair you've only waited 6 hours and Europe was certainly asleep in that time.

Do you really need that many languages? It's very unusual for boards to have more than one or two at most. People generally don't join boards where the posts are not in their native language, so having the common site text in a different languages is a bit moot.
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david63
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by david63 »

Sean Moran wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2017 9:33 am I will build the new forum with 3.1.17
You might have some time to wait as 3.1.11 has not even been released yet!

And installing language packs will not translate the posts.

Have you looked at the Google translate extension?
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by Sean Moran »

Thank you so much, KevC. I read your posts in the "When to Quit ..." thread earlier, and appreciated your advice. I appreciate your encouragement now too. It is almost my bedtime in Australia. I am an early riser, so that is why I closed off the thread prematurely to save anyone having to think on this whilst I was sleeping.

It is true. It was 3:41am after an election in England when I posted, so I will check again after 24 hours, just in case someone might be able to provide some ballpark advice about my 3-in-1 style of cryptic questions on this language pack matter.

I don't need all 54 language packs, especially since there are no members as yet, and there is only one language which I am careful not to mention because of the associated innuendos that inevitably follow anytime an Australian man mentions the Kingdom of Thailand to the ignorant masses. That sort of stuff is not tolerated this year after HM King Bhumipol has passed on, but there is ONE important language I will need because 90% of my friends on facebook are kon Thai, and 90% of those do not read a word of English past 'Hello'.

At this point, my market is based on facebook, and I have spent last week downloading gigabytes of corpus files for the Moses STM software in order to try and replicate the facebook translation function. However, Moses is very CPU-intensive and needs a few dedicated servers for translating on top of a web server, so I have dispensed with that option for my shared-webhosting website, and am using HiFiKabin's Google Translate extension, in conjunction with the phpBB standard languages. The idea being that members can choose their native language in phpBB, and use Google to translate posts (initially page-by-page but with some tweaking, one post at a time I plan) into their language to read my English, and vice versa.

By the ubiquitous six(6) degrees of separation, my friends who speak no English have friends in numerous nations throughout Asia who speak a range of obscure languages (eg. Bengali which is not on the phpBB list yet), and I want to eventually maximise the range of available languages on the forum, but that one I mentioned above is the most necessary at the current time. I want to steal users from our Mr Zuckerberg, to put it bluntly. I need to do as well as he did without the advertising. Then maybe they will come.

A timeframe 'estimate' is what I am asking. Is it likely that half of those 28 language packs not yet updated for version 3.2.0 be likely ready by October 14th?, is the first and most impossible question to answer with certainty, but those who know phpBB better than I would be able to provide a better estimate.

The second question pertains to what encumbrances there might be if I continue with 3.1.17. I have since read that in January, support will be discontinued for 3.1, but I shan't be needing support by then, most likely.

The third question is about the makeup of the language packs, for 3.2.0, which I have explored and now only need to work out how to adjust the 3.1.x language packs and add the extras (using Google translate or Moses) to build my own language packs for 3.2.0, (just for personal use - they will be quite roughies). Probably a massive job, so it can be a secondary project, and I may as well continue to use the old 2016 version of 3.1.17 which at least continues to operate when there are 54 language packs installed, even if they may not all perform the way they do on 3.0.x, some of them. I have only tested a few very quickly.

I know how to implement Plan B now, but I would really appreciate it if anyone who is more familiar with phpBB and this forum can give me a ballpark guess on whether the majority of these 28 languages not yet updated are likely to possibly be updated by October 14th, the forum opening date to come. No guarantees required. Just an educated guess is enough for me to opt with building a new custom style for 3.2.0 and taking a chance that the Thai language pack (and a lot of others) will be updated for 3.2.0 by ten.

Otherwise, I'll stick with 3.1.17 and just change the images on the style I built last year which works smoothly on 3.1.17. I will also need to incorporate HiFiKabins translate extension, but that should be quite simple.

Thanks for your reply because I have been feeling a iittle lonely today. Have a good night (or day) mate.
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by Sean Moran »

david63 wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2017 10:05 am You might have some time to wait as 3.1.11 has not even been released yet!
And installing language packs will not translate the posts.
Have you looked at the Google translate extension?
Thanks David. I should have gone back to the 2016 forum (currently in mourning for HM Bhumiphol of Thailand) to check the version number, but I thought I remembered it as 3.1.17. Maybe I used to run 3.0.17 long ago and am confusing my versions. It is currently 3.1.x.

Yes, I am running Google translate now, but as that translates on a page-by-page basis, I need the phpBB language packs so that members can select their native languages and not have to call on Google as they navigate the forums, but only use Google when they need to translate a post in a foreign language.

I hope to find some way to use Google to translate the text of a single post eventually, but not sure how yet, and suspect that many have tried that before me already. It is just TCP/IP so there must be a way...
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david63
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by david63 »

I would say that if a language pack has not been updated by now that it is unlikely that it will suddenly be updated so in any planning I would assume that these other language packs will not be being updated by October.
David
Remember: You only know what you know and - you don't know what you don't know!

I now no longer support any of my extensions but they will start to become available here
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by Sean Moran »

david63 wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2017 10:34 am I would assume that these other language packs will not be being updated by October.
Mate, that is precisely what I wanted to know this morning when I swallowed my pride and begged for help.
No guarantee required! I just need to know whether to continue building my new style for 3.2.0 or whether to adjust the existing 3.1.? style for the Google translator and use that version for the new forum.

You have answered my most important question. Thank You.
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by Sean Moran »

Just for clarification, the old 2016 version I have referred to as 3.1.17 is actually 3.1.7. I just went and logged in and checked it. Must be some kind of early-onset dementia in me. My apologies for the 3.1.17.
Goodnight and thanks again for some pertinent wisdom on an estimate I could not make without some help, Mr David.

It is a bit of a challenge to sleep on, actually. Can I think of a way to build a language pack for 3.2.0 in a language which I can barely speak, and can not read more than two words of, in four(4) months as a part-time after-hours sort of escapade, with the help of Google?

I doubt whether there will ever be an answer to that question. Nothing wrong with 3.1.7.
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by Sean Moran »

<SOLVED>
Use 3.1.10 and rebuild that Tower of Babble ... :lol:

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Sean Moran
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by Sean Moran »

Oh drat and double drat!

Little did I realise that phpBB-3.1.10 does not like php-7.0.15 ...

Now this is strange because both 3.2.0 and 3.1.10 run on the webhost's server, but I just began to install 3.1.10 on my localhost with all the languages and chosen extensions, and look what happened! This is a good time to drink beer now, honestly!

Looks like I will have to build the new 3.1.10 style online, using FTP to test all my adjustments. :(

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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by david63 »

Downgrade your version of PHP on your localhost
David
Remember: You only know what you know and - you don't know what you don't know!

I now no longer support any of my extensions but they will start to become available here
Sean Moran
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by Sean Moran »

Thanks but no thanks, David. I do appreciate your help yesterday and also this afternoon, however my current Linux installation has been quite customised over these past few months, with a number of additions which are new, and therefore not yet incorporated into my custom .ISO file which I tend to use to reinstall every month or so normally, but with all the development I have been doing this year, there are many extensions to GIMP and also PHP-7.0 such as MP3_Id which I used Pear to install, and I kept notes, but I have only ever done these enhancements once, and it will take me a few days to go back over all those dubious notes to remember how I installed the MP3_Id library for my music player, and there is every chance that it may not run on PHP 5.33 besides that, especially after what just happened. I mean, fool me once ...

Seriously, I have to ask, Why can't anyone make things backward-compatible anymore? :cry:

Luckily, the only changes which I will need to make at the start to the prosilver style are rearranging the header, navbar and footer, and then redoing a few of the images, eg. bg_list, bg_header, site_logo etc., so if I am clever, and do this tomorrow after I have drowned my pathetic sorrows, then it should only take three(3) or four(4) FTP sessions to send it up to the online web server. It is just a little disconcerting to be running a version of phpBB which I cannot also keep a somewhat identical copy of on my localhost, but I am a bit of a stubborn old fool, and I am the one who decided to make friends with all those foreigners who don't speak English and thus it's my problem that I want to install all fifty-four(54) language packs. If I look at it that way, I only have myself to blame. ;)
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by JimA »

Sean Moran wrote: Sat Jun 10, 2017 7:09 amSeriously, I have to ask, Why can't anyone make things backward-compatible anymore? :cry:
I'm not sure what more can be expected of us than we've already done. We released phpBB 3.2 because 3.1 didn't play well with PHP 7.0 and above. It had to be in a major version because the new BBCode parser that was required was quite a big change and we didn't want to break other stuff in 3.1, like extensions.

Naturally, like you and your friends, we don't speak 54 languages either. So we're reliant on the language pack authors to update their packs, many of whom have done so very quickly too. In the relatively short time that 3.2 has been available, there are now 26 language packs for it. So while I'm sorry that we can't be more helpful to you here, we've done everything in our power to offer you the best package available.
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Sean Moran
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Re: How best to install 54 language packs to new forum?

Post by Sean Moran »

Thanks for your reply, JimA.

I was thinking about why PHP-7 couldn't include PHP-5.4 redundancies at the time, but I would also secretly like to know how I could adjust the phpBB-3.1 language packs so that they might work with 3.2, in some sort of way, at the same time, I admit.

Still, this is the first time since 2009 that I have considered looking at another kind of open-source BB alternative, and I won't, because I doubt that any of the others could offer 54 language packs anyway.

Could you give me a hint on the differences between how 3.1.10 and 3.2.0 treat their language packs, because it maybe easier for my project if I was to find out what 3.2.0 needs that 3.1.10 doesn't, and change the configurations myself, and use Google Translate to cut&paste their translations into a new imporved language pack which 3.2.0 can accommodate without catastrophe. Either way, this is going to be a long month...
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