Translation, language files

Hi @hittheroadjack,

Which parts of the plugin are you trying to translate? Recently, I have converted all my plugins to ReactJS to be able to build nicer and better UIs but the problem I faced is that it became really difficult to provide the ability to translate them. I would need to load the translation strings from the server-side in PHP and load them, which is not really ideal.

I found a few days to do this with the WordPress “framework” but it was clunky, at best… and was hoping for enhancements, but they never came.

First attempt I translated to German from the ‘contact-form-block-fr_FR.po’ using poedit.
But it didn’t work – the resulting files ‘contact-form-block-de_DE.po/mo’ were not recognized in the /language dir by the plugin.
Second attempt I loaded the whole source code into a temp dir on my PC and used the poedit feature ‘extract translation strings from source code’ as you would create a .pot file. It did not work either, although the strings were quite different from the first ones. The French files seem to be rather outdated.
I strongly believe that the translation feature is essential for UIs interacting with website users or visitors. Most of them will prefer being addressed in their native language rather than enjoying sophisticated UIs. All they need is a method to contact the admin or someone else for help – be it colourful or grey.
Coders will understand enough English to get along, but don’t count on that with normal visitors/users. In the eastern parts of Germany, we still have a whole generation of people who never had English in school – they had Russian! It’s getting better every year since then but still way to go!