As E-Blah Final is launching soon, the source code and language files are more or less stabalized. I decided to carry on with the Chinese language pack project. I anticipated that by the end of October 2003, the Chinese Language pack will be tested and ready for release.

Chinese Characters and its grammar is different from English. I am carefully translating every language strings in the original English pack to retain as much meaning as possible. Hence, I will need some time to review the language strings and do the translation.

Chinese characters is different from English alphabets. Chinese Charcters, unlike  English, has fixed width and contain as much as 20 strokes to make up a complete charcter. Therefore, at the same time, I am also working on a CSS file to control the character size so that they will be legible on-screen. I am also working on the translation of the image buttons.

There are two different sets of Chinese Characters: Traditional and Simplified. Simplified Chinese have fewer character strokes than compared with Traditional Chinese. China start using Simplified Chinese durign the culture revolution. Countries like Taiwan and Hong Kong stick with Traditional Chinese. I am working on the Traditonal Chinese first before converting the files into Simplified Chinese. As I have obtain the software to convert Traditional Chinese to Simplified Chinese, the working time is shorten by half. (Yeah!)

Updated - 31 Jan 2004
Due to unforsee circumstances, I am unable to carryon with the translation project last year. This year, with the release of the final version, I decided to carry on with this project. (Thank God I am free for these few months.) It is something I would like to do in return for such a great BBS!


Here is the new timeline and plan:
1. Translate Button Images (Traditional & Simplified) - DONE...
2. Translating Language Pack - TO BE COMPLETE BY END FEB 2004
3. Chinese CSS Settings - DONE... (updated: 15 AUG 03)
4. Upload, Test & Debug - TO BE COMPLETE BY EARLY MARCH 2004
5. Anticipate to Release by END MARCH 2004 ... Or earlier

All feedback and suggestions are appreciated. I will need assistance to ensure that the translation is correct and the meaning is right for the forum functions. If you are interested to help out, please contact me at:
forum_admin@danielck.per.sg

Cheers!

Tip:

Note that you will need to create the language pack in ASCII text. If not, they will not work when you upload to the server.

Unicode is great for inputing if your system supports it. However, by uploading the unicoded language files in ASCII mode, it will corrupted the files.

Uploading unicoded files in binary mode preserves the information but it will not work as the language files need to be uploaded in ASCII mode.

Here is the process tracking for the translation project...

Simplified Chinese Language Pack - 50% Completed ...

Until 31 Jan 2004:
- SChinese.lng
- MessageDisplay.lng
- MessageIndex.lng
- Notify.lng
- Portal.lng
- Poll.lng
- Print.lng
- Recommend.lng
- Register.lng
- Report.lng
- Routines.lng
- Search.lng
- SourceCodeMod.lng
- Stats.lng
- Theme.lng
- Whereis.lng

As on 1 FEB 2004...
- Login.lng
- Load.lng

As on 3 FEB 2004 (2nd is a public holiday... so I dun work )
- Invite.lng
- Convert.lng
- Calendar.lng
- Attach.lng

As on 9 FEB 2004... (Busy with website these few days so progress is abit slow )
- BoardIndex.lng
- BoardLock.lng

As on 12 FEB 2004... (Finally, completed 50%. The last 4 files are really big files! )
- Moderate.lng
- ManageBoards.lng

Cool cool.  Tell me what a chinese support forum should look like (like I have the Spanish support forum), and I'll add that to the list.  Make sure it says the same as the Spanish ... umm ... if you donno (I don't), run it through a translator, lol.

Not too hard to decipher that. Spanish Discussion, I think.

hi Justin,

Below is the information you need. I've include also the English description because Chinese characters is different from other language. Without switching to the proper encoding, the characters will display as gibberish code. I am only providing Simplified Chinese description, which can be properly view using GB2312 encoding.

I am also attaching the text file in case the browser mess up the coding.

---

Board Name:
ÖÐÎÄÌÖÂÛÇø - Chinese Discussion

Board Description:
ÕâÀïÌṩ¸øÖÐÎÄÓû§Ö§Öú£¬Ð޸ĺõÄԴʼÂëÏÂÔØ£¬ ͼƬ½»Á÷£¬ÓëÆäËûÏà¹ØÌÖÂÛ¡£ÄúÒ²¿ÉÒÔÔÚ´Ë·¢±íÄúµÄ×÷Æ·£¡

This discussion board provides Support, Mods and Hacks, Graphic Exchange, and other related discussion  to Chinese E-Blah! users.

Quoted from JediWannaB, posted January 31, 2004, 1:18pm at here

Not too hard to decipher that. Spanish Discussion, I think.

Jedi:
Not too hard... Altavista Translation work marvels! 

Justin:
Thanks!