82. LOCALISING CIVICRM CiviCRM is written with English-language code and strings for display. It has, however, also been built for organisations worldwide. T hey need to be able to adapt the tool to local circumstances and demands without modifying the tool technically. Localising CiviCRM (or any software) affects much more than you might initially think. T o adapt CiviCRM to a local language is not just a matter of translating the text displayed on the screen. Consider for example the currency used in a given country (USD or $ in United States, GBP or ÂŁ in Great Britain), date and time formats (for example: November 16th, 2009 will be commonly written as 11/16/2009 in United States, but in Russia the format will be 16.11.2009) or the formatting of numbers (the same number will be written slightly differently in different countries: 1 234 567 ,89 in Slovakia or Hungary, but 1,234,567 .89 in Japan or the United States). CiviCRM provides plenty of functionality to support these language and region specific needs. T he development team is constantly developing new tools in this area too. T he Localization screen (shown in the following screenshot) lets an administrator select the right locale for the language and country of the organization using CiviCRM. Go to: Administer > Configure > Global Settings > Localization.
TRANSLATIONS CiviCRM accommodates different languages, however the developers rely on the community to translate the text displayed. A number of languages have already been provided to a greater or lesser extent. Some have more than 90% of the text translated, others only 5%, and a number of languages have not been translated at all. Please check the online translation tool T ransifex (http://www.transifex.net/projects/p/civicrm/) to find out about your language of interest. Download and install it on your CiviCRM installation to find out how well it will suit your needs. You may find that although the translation is correct, you would want to use different terms in your situation. You are very much encouraged to take part in the translation of your language.
FACILITIES A number of facilities in CiviCRM support the community in its translation efforts, though some are still under development.
306