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Translation in Magento

14/09/2009 - 12:07 / Posted by Sylwia Studzińska
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Translations between languages is quite simple in Magento. For an advanced developer, who has already worked with PHP frameworks, it is not a matter to discuss, but for a beginner it may need a few words of explanation. All texts on the page that should be translated, are stored in CSV files, in /app/locale/[language] directory. The [language] part of the path is build of language code, e. g. 'en_US'.

If you have a look at the files content, you will find that every file structure is the same, one line contains two texts: one in your default language, and one in the destination language. To use the files - also called dictionaries - they must be declared in module's config file (config.xml). You should put this code directly inside your frontend or admin node of the config file.

<translate>
        <modules>
                <companyname_modulename>
                        <files>
                        <default>CompanyName_ModuleName.csv</default>
                        </files>
                </companyname_modulename>
        </modules>
</translate>

That's all. Now, when you want to use a phrase that should be translated, use:

echo $this->__('text to translate');

Magento will look in you dictionary files for the phrase 'text to translate' and will return the corresponding text in the proper language.