How to Setup a New Language for a Joomla website?

Joomla is a unique platform with extensive features for language control. It allows you to create a multilingual website quickly, without the need to install a third-party extension.

The new Joomla 3 comes with advanced features than its predecessor 2.5 with the Extensions Manager section boasting of a new tab labeled Install Languages where all the language packages are found. You can select any you want and start the installing it from the Joomla service.

This article will guide you through the installation and setup of a new language in Joomla 3. The are two methods of installing a new language in Joomla:

Step 1: Using the Extension Manager

One way to install a new language in Joomla is using the Extension Manager which is quite simple. Go to the Extension Manager menu and click Install Languages icon.

On this interface, follow the following steps:

Click the Install languages button to access the page named Install Accredited Language Translations.
Next, hit the Find languages button to auto refresh the list of languages available.
Now, search for the language you want on the Search tool.
Go ahead and check the text box next to the language you have chosen to install.
Hit the Install button.

Once the language is successfully installed, you should get the output below:

Option 2: Using the Language Manager

The second way of installing a new language on your site is through the Language Manager.

Still, on the Extension manager interface, go to the Install language section.

Click on it to Install your language. You should be able to see the Install Accredited Language Translations page. From here, follow the same steps as outlined in option 1 to install your new language.

Step 2: Configuring a New Language

Once the new language is installed on your site, you can do any of these three things:

Install it as default on the website’s frontend
Make it default on the website’s backend
For multilingual website, you can create an extra configuration for multiple languages or do a language override.

The first two options are simple and easy to understand. Just choose a language of your choice using the radio button then in the Joomla toolbar, hit the Default button. This should set your language as default for your website.

Step 3: Creating a Content Language

For the multilingual websites, you need to use an additional language which means you have to configure a new Content language.

To create a new language, go to the Content section in the Joomla interface and click the New button.

Once you hit the New button, a screen will come up to allow you to define your new content language. For instance, if you decide to choose the language Polish, you need to fill in the following details:

These details will help define the new content language on your website. You can choose this language when you’re done creating content for your website.

Step 4: Creating a Language Override

At times you may discover that a certain language string doesn’t work for your site, or they are wrongly translated. Joomla allows you to create a new language override, as a way to fix any problems with your language.

For instance, if you want to change the text Read more on your site, go to Overrides, then click on the New button and enter all the details required as shown below:

The text in the illustration above represents the information you will use to override the current text in the already installed language.
Language constant is the language string.

Step 5: Installing an Extension Language

You can install and configure a new extension language in your website from an extension developer who provides such language packages. You need to download the language package from a trusted developers site then install it.

After downloading it, you can install it using the Extension Manager.

Go to Extension Manager and hit the Install button. Choose the language pack you want, then click Install again.

If the installation is successful, you should see a screen like this:

Conclusion

That’s it. Now you have all the tips and tricks on how to set up a new language on Joomla 3. I hope these aspects were helpful to get you started with the configuration of a new language on Joomla.

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