Additional language support

Owned by Almuth Boehme [Communardo]
Last updated: Nov 08, 2018Version comment
3 min read

Question

My app for Jira, Confluence or Bitbucket should support more languages.

Solution

You can add a language file to the app, provided it runs on an Atlassian system.

This is not a supported feature. You may create your own language files, but you will need to maintain and update them on your own, if you update the app. Troubleshooting the process described below is not part of support.

  1. Go to the Atlassian Marketplace listing of the respective app, tab "Versions" and click "See all x versions"
  2. In the version list, hover over the version you want to use and click "Download".
  3. Save the file to your computer.
  4. Use a file compression tool to either unpack the resulting file or edit the package.
  5. Open the folder "i18n".
  6. Copy the file "i18n.properties" and rename it to the language, e.g. "i18n_de.properties" for German. Make sure that the encoding is set to UTF-8.

  7. You will find a list of items to translate. For example

    communardo.remindme.settings.label=RemindMe Global Settings
communardo.remindme.settings.link.description=Settings link
communardo.remindme.settings.dialog.description=The settings dialog where users can enable, disable and configure their RemindMe mails.

    Everything to the right of "=" can be translated. However, it is not permitted to change the name of the app or other proprietary names (e.g. "Confluence" or "Jira").

  8. After translating the complete information, check that all special characters are written with unicode numbers. This includes, but is not limited to, ä, ö, ü, ß, é, í and so forth. For example

    "f\u00FCr" instead of "für"
  9. Back up the finished file on your file system for later use. You will need it again when you update the app.

  10. If you unpacked the app package in step 4, pack it again.

  11. Upload the package in the administration, under "Manage apps" click "Upload app". You can do this even while the app is already installed, provided the version you upload is higher or equal to the installed version.

  12. If necessary, activate the app or add a license key.

  13. Now if you change your language settings to the new language, you will see the translated buttons and descriptions.

Updating the app

When you want to install a new version of the app, you need to go through the same process again. You can however reuse the file you saved in step 9. Make sure to check if lines were added or deleted in the new "i18n.properties" and update your file accordingly before packing it with the app.