Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog, 2nd Edition

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PART II:DESIGNING AND DEVELOPING WORDPRESS THEMES

When you release a theme or a plugin with a language  le, be sure to also make the original

.po  le available so that the users can translate it into their own language as well. It is a good

idea to encourage that, since others may bene t as well.

THE NAMING ISSUE

While it may not be entirely within your theme or plugin translation scope, a weird error

arises when a widget area gets called, and it can’t be found because the name has been

changed by the translation.  at is (or hopefully was, by the time you read this) the case with

WordPress and the Swedish translation of “Sidebar,” being a widget area located in sidebar.

php no less.  e translators translated “Sidebar” (to “Sidomeny,” which somewhat misses the

mark, but still) and by doing so the themes that made direct calls to the “Sidebar” widget area

failed, since it was translated incorrectly.

Messy? Yes, it is.  e point is, be wary so that you don’t end up translating things that are used

for calling up various features, functions, or whatever. At least not without making sure that

the actual call for whatever it is, is also altered accordingly. You might want to take a closer

look at the functions.php  le in either Twenty Ten’s or Notes Blog’s and examine how the

widget areas are localized there. By localizing both the area name (and description), and the

actual ...