Domain Translation

The header, the menu, the footer, and the pages of a domain can be shown in the viewer's language. It works the same way as game translations: a dictionary of “source → translation” pairs lies beside the text, and the text is substituted when shown. Where there is no translation, the viewer sees the original.

The screen is “Translation” in the domain's admin panel (“Translations” in the new admin). It can be opened by a domain admin.

This is only about the text you wrote. The engine's own buttons, emails, and interface are translated on their own and have nothing to do with this dictionary.

• The language the domain is written in — the language of the original. Until it is chosen, the domain has no localization at all: nothing is substituted and the dictionary is not read.
• Translation languages — checkboxes. Next to each, “show untranslated as”: which language to fall back to where a translation is missing. Empty means straight to the base language.
• The “Other languages” row — where to send a viewer whose language the domain does not have.

A fallback may only point at a language the domain has declared. Untick a language and everything falling back to it is reset right there on the screen.

Localization can be switched off (“Localization off”) at any time: the substitution stops at once for everybody, and the dictionary stays intact.

The “Pages” tab lists the domain's pages and asks about each one: is it translated by the dictionary or not.

A page may have a copy of its own in another language. Such a copy always beats the dictionary: if it exists, the viewer sees it, and the dictionary is not applied to that page. There is no way to turn a copy into dictionary pairs — it is either the copy or the dictionary.

The third tab is the table of pairs itself. It is exactly the same table as the “Translation” tab of the game editor: the same “untranslated / translated / not translatable” groups, the same filter, the same “do not translate” marks. How it works is described in detail on the Multilingual Game page.

There is one difference — the “What are we translating” selector in the filter bar:

• “Everything at once: the domain and the pages”;
• “Domain: header, menu, footer”;
• “Page …“ — one at a time.

“Everything at once” writes a translation into several dictionaries. A string that occurs both in the header and on a page is one row of the table, and editing it writes into the dictionary of every place the string occurs in. If a page needs its own wording for the same phrase, narrow “What are we translating” down to that page first.

• The domain's name — in the header and in the browser tab's title.
• The site header, the site menu, the site footer, the in-game header — the html from the "Design" section.
• The domain's pages — the ones ticked on the “Pages” tab.

Not translated: css, addresses (the domain name, a page's address), mail and payment settings, the engine's own text, and the content of games — games have translations of their own.

The domain's emails go out with the base name, not the translated one.

{% match lang %} templates do not work in the domain design — that is a device for tasks.

The domain menu is a script, and the button captions in it are plain strings. To let the engine see them, wrap each one in gt():

add_navbar({
  items: [
    {name: gt('ИГРЫ'), url: 'index.php'},
    {name: gt('АРХИВ'), url: 'archive.php'},
  ],
  ...
});

The caption then shows up in the translation table as an ordinary string, and the translation is substituted on the server, before the page reaches the viewer.

• gt() takes the string right inside the brackets, in quotes. gt(x) and gt('A' + b) are left alone by the engine — they stay as they are and return their own value.
• Strings with no letters (digits, punctuation) are not translated.
• Captions without gt() simply never reach the table, and nobody warns you.

This works in any html block of the design, not only in the menu.

The “JSON” button at the top of the screen:

• Download everything — a snapshot of the whole dictionary, all languages.
• Download the untranslated — a file for a translator: only what is left.
• Download (language) and Download the untranslated (language) — the same for one language.
• Load from a file, Copy to the clipboard, Paste from the clipboard.

Loading does not save: it edits the screen, and it is the “Save” button that writes. The browser will not let you leave the page with unsaved changes in silence — it asks.

Loading merges rather than replaces: pairs are applied one by one. An empty translation in the file means “remove this pair”.

Both kinds of file are accepted — the full snapshot and the translator's file.

A new domain inherits the base domain's dictionary — as a copy, once, at the moment of creation. Later edits to the base domain's dictionary never reach it.

A new domain has a name of its own, so the inherited translation of the old name arrives in “Outdated translations”, and the new name stays untranslated.

• Editing the original detaches its translation. Change the text in the design and its translation goes into “Outdated translations”, where it can be re-attached or deleted. Rolling the design back in the studio does not roll the dictionaries back.
• The source is the saved design, not a draft. If you have edited the header in the studio, save it first, then reload this screen.
• One “Save” writes several things at once — the languages, the page marks, and the dictionaries. If something did not get written, the red bar lists it all together.
• A row that is untranslated and unmarked is not stored at all — the dictionary never holds empty pairs.
• A translation that drops or invents a substitution (!username! and the like) is not saved: the engine says so.

Menu captions used to be translated in the browser, by a call in the menu block itself:

addTranslation('en', 'АВТОРАМ', 'ABOUT');

It still works, and running domains are not deprived of it. But it covers only the menu button captions — not the header, not the footer, not the pages — and it says nothing about what is still untranslated.

There will be no double translation: if the server has already translated a string, what reaches the browser is the English one, and addTranslation simply does not find it.

For a new domain use gt() and this page.

• Domain Menu Setup — how the menu block is built.
• Multilingual Game — game translations; the table is the same one.