Sadish Bala at wpthemes.info has created some beautiful WordPress themes. One them is used for my wifes newly created blogg, then one you are visiting right now. It is called MistyLook and we have modified it some to match the feel of her blog. Since she wanted a blog in Swedish I went about translating it and realized it is so much easier with a separate language file.
So in the spur of the moment I sat down when the rest of the family had gone to bed and modified the theme to work with a separate language file which makes it much easier to translate the theme to different languages.
It is a late night gig so there might be some flaws, if you find some let me know and if I have time I will try to help out. I found a couple myself the day after and there are also some pieces of the code which I have left untouched, so somewhere in a dark corner of your blog there might pop-up a message in english, but I hope you can live with that. More technical programming questions I am certain Mr Bala is much more the man for. I am just the guy who loves my wife and enjoys make complex things easier :o)
I am putting this out as is and in case Mr Bala decides he does not want me/us to distribute this package in this manner I will remove it, otherwise it will be here for the taking and enjoyment.
Anyhow, so on to business. How does this work? Well, here are some instructions to follow.
1. Download the zip-file with the modified MistyLook theme here (updated 7th of january 2008 - see comment below): MistyLook with language support
2. Unzip the whole thing and decide if you are going to use the pretranslated english or swedish version. If so you can skip right to step 5.
3. Use the english.php-file in the languages folder as a starting point to make your own translation. It should be pretty obvious what you need to translate. Just keep in between the tags: ‘keep translation in here’. Also pick you favorite date format in the file or leave as is.
4. Name your new file german.php or whatever your language is and place it in the languages folder.
5. Open the header.php-file and adjust it right at the beginning to point at the language file of your choice.
6. Open the functions.php-file and adjust it right at the beginning to point at the language file of your choice.
7. Save everything and upload the whole mistylook-folder into the wp-content/themes/ folder on the server where your WordPress installation resides.
For full language customizing of your blog make sure you have also uploaded the .mo and .po files for your language to your WordPress installation. Read the instructions for WordPress in your language on how to locate and use those files.
If you like this work, any links - swedish or international - to my wifes blog here at http://www.ettriktliv.se/wellness-bloggen would be highly appreciated (FYI, she will be writing in swedish about wellness).
Enjoy!
Markus
Uploaded an updated version of the zip-file. Found some of those dark corners that were not translated and had to do with the Theme Options in the Admin area. Also modified the instructions as you also need to make a small modification to the functions.php for the translation to work properly. /Markus