Editing language text in Joomla 2.5

Instead of editing the language files as explained below, J2.5 has a language override feature which may save you time and trouble. By using overrides, your language file changes will not be lost when upgrading from one version to the next. Go to your admin panel 'Extensions->Language Manager->Overrides' and create new overrides for the language file text that you want to change!

Editing language text in Joomla 1.5

To change any of the text you see throughout the component, you can edit the language files. There is one language file for the administrator panel and one for the front-end. To edit the language files, you may either use a translation component (for example, Translation Manager) or edit the language files in a text editor.

The translation manager component will allow you to edit and create new language files via the Joomla! admin panel. Editing the files with a text editor will require downloading the language file, making your changes and uploading the file to it's original location. Either way is fairly straight forward and easy to do.

Changing the language files is useful in many cases; from changing a popup alert box to say something different to changing a form field name. The language files, if used correctly, could save a lot of time in custom development and will also keep the component files untouched - making your future upgrade process less of a hassle. Below are the locations of the language files (in this case, for com_iproperty English). Each language should have a seperate folder - you may need to install the language packs from Joomla if you don't see your language files.

Location of Language Files:

Admin Language File Location: administrator/language/en-GB/en-GB.com_iproperty.ini

Site Language File Location: language/en-GB/en-GB.com_iproperty.ini

How to edit language files in a text editor:

When editing the language files you will see the language variable and it's definition in the following format:

If you would like to modify the 'Definition' to say something different, you would simply edit like:

After changing all of the language variables to your new definitions, save and upload the language file back to it's original location.

For more information please read this tutorial. This tutorial deals with template translation but same basic idea applies for component text translations.