You can translate OSCampus from its default English language to your preferred one. This is a five-step process:

1. Install your language pack for Joomla.
2. Create your language folders for OSCampus.
3. Copy the en-GB language source files for OSCampus.
4. Rename the en-GB language source files for OSCampus.
5. Translate the OSCampus language files.

In the blog post, you will take a look at this process.

Your OSCampus Joomla extension will be working in the same language you set for your Joomla itself. Let say you would like to run your OSCampus in Arabic. Then you would need to set Arabic as the default language of your Joomla. This is what Step #1 takes care of.

In Step #2, you create a folders structure for your new language in OSCampus. Those will be the folders where your OSCampus will be expecting to find its new language files.

Good! You now have your new language folders for your OSCampus. But they are empty yet. In Step #3 and Step #4, you will create in them OSCampus language files to translate.

With your Joomla and OSCampus now set to work with your new language, now is a good time to translate the OSCampus. This is what you will do in Step #5.

Let's zoom in on these five steps.

Step #1. Install your language pack for Joomla

Joomla has a built-in component to manage languages. 

To install your required language in this component, you would go to "Extensions" > "Language(s)":

On the next screen "Languages: Installed (Site)", you would click "Install languages":

You will be taken to the "Extensions: Install Languages" screen. There you need to find your language and click its "Install" button. As you can see on my screenshot below, I searched tor the Russian language:

After a brief screen activity, you will see the message "Installation of the language was successful.":

Great! At this point, you installed your required language. But your Joomla still keeps working on its default English language. You need to switch its frontend and then the administrator panel to this new language.

To do that, you, once again, would go to "Extensions" > "Language(s)". You would click on the little star icon to set your new language as the default language for your site frontend:

You will see the message starting with "Default Language Saved":

Good! You switched Joomla's frontend pages to your new language. Next, you would want to do the same for your Joomla administrator panel.

You would go to the box next to the "Search" field. You will switch it from the "Site" to "Administrator":

Then you will click on the little star button to set your new language as the default language of your Joomla administrator panel:

Excellent! At this point, you switched your Joomla site to a language of your choice. You are now ready to move on to your OSCampus' language folders. 

Step #2. Create your language folders for OSCampus

To perform this step, you would need to FTP to your Joomla site.

Once there, you will go to /administrator/components/com_oscampus/language/.

You will create in there a new folder, giving it the name of your language tag. For the Russian language that I selected for this tutorial, the language tag is ru-RU. You can find your language tag next to your language on the "Joomla! 3 Translations" page. 

Here is my screenshot with the language tag for the Russian language:

Good job! You just created a folder for the language files of your OSCampus control panel.

You then create a similar folder for the language files of your OSCampus frontend pages.

You will go to /components/com_oscampus/language.

You will create in there a new folder with the name of your preferred language.

Great! You just created your OSCampus folders for language files. Now is a good time to populate with OSCampus language files. 

Step #3. Copy the en-GB language source files for OSCampus

In the previous step, you created your OSCampus language folders. In this step, you will fill them with OSCampus language files. 

You will go to /administrator/components/com_oscampus/language/en-GB.

You will copy its files into /administrator/components/com_oscampus/language/<your-language>:

Great! Your OSCampus now has language files to translate its administrator interface. You would now move on to do the same for the OSCampus frontend pages.

You will go to /components/com_oscampus/language/en-GB. 

You will copy its file into /components/com_oscampus/language/<your-language>:

Wonderful! You are one step away from getting ready to translate your OSCampus. 

Step #4. Rename the en-GB language source files for OSCampus

At this stage, your OSCampus language file names all start with en-GB. You need to change them from en-GB to the tag of your preferred language. In my demonstration, this will be ru-RU. 

You will go to /administrator/components/com_oscampus/language/<your-language>. 

There, you would change the "en-GB" language tag in the names of the files to the tag of your language. In my demonstration, I replaced "en-GB" with "ru-RU":

Then you would go to /components/com_oscampus/language/<your-language>.

Just as in the previous step, change "en-GB" to your language tag:

Superb! You are now all set to start translating your OSCampus.

Step #5. Translate the OSCampus language files

Let's assume you would want to translate first the OSCampus control panel.

For that, you would go to /administrator/components/com_oscampus/language/<your-language>.

Thee you would open one of the three files for editing. For my demonstration, I opened up the ru-RU.com_oscampus.ini file.

You will find a line of text, starting with COM_OSCAMPUS. In Joomla terms, this line is called a "language string". For my demonstration, I picked up the COM_OSCAMPUS_CONFIGURATION = "OSCampus Configuration" language string:

You will translate the text between the double quotes to the right of the equation mark. In my example, I left the OSCampus text as is and translated just Configuration:

Then you save your file and check your OSCampus interface. You should see your translations at work:

Now you would translate the rest of the language strings.

Then you would repeat these steps for the rest of the OSCampus language files of your new language. 

Will my language folders and files be deleted when I update OSCampus?

The answer is No. Your newly created language folders and files will remain intact during your next OSCampus update. The update will override only the folders and files that are part of OSCampus installation pack. 

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