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magento-1.5magento

Magento: what is the difference between locale and design translation?

I asked about locale translation here Magento: how to translate action tag content?. At the same time magento has translation themes:

app/design/frontend/default/default/
app/design/frontend/default/french/
app/design/frontend/default/german/

If we can do translation in locale files what are design folders for then? (In case we have the same theme for each language). Or is it implied that I should use design folders only when I have different themes?

Solution

  • Actually, a single theme can contain multiple translation locales. The following would be perfectly possible (though obviously not advised):

    app/design/frontend/default/french/locale/de_DE/translate.csv

    Storeviews are often used for switching between languages, because it is quite easy to set a locale on store-view configuration scope from the backend.

    To answer your question more direct, I would suggest that you:

    • Install an initial language in app/locale/(code).
    • Anything that deviates from this 'core' locale, to be put in app/design/frontend/(your_package)/default/locale/(code)/translate.csv.

    This leaves you room to do overrides in non-default themes at any later point.