Ah — you mentioned RC1. Then yes, the BuddyPress plugins would be in “mu-plugins” still.
Write in new language to msgstr within buddypress.pot and save as buddypress-spots.mo
Make sure you are creating the MO file from a PO file, which is in turn a copy of the POT that is bundled with BuddyPress.
Your “bp-languages” directory should look something like this:
buddypress.pot
buddypress-mysite.po
buddypress-mysite.mo
If you have trouble editing the POT or PO in a text editor, you can use special software also — see https://codex.wordpress.org/Translating_WordPress and look for “Translation Tools.” In my opinion those are overkill for this type of thing, though.
Ezra,
When you are editing the language file (after copying the POT to a PO), you will see two lines for each entry: a msgid and a msgstr — the message id and the message string. For example:
msgid "Group Wire"
msgstr "Group Wall"
The important thing is to only edit the message string, not anything else. The message id, as well as the lines above it that indicate which file and line the entry belongs to, are essential for the language translation to work and should not be touched.
The ‘buddypress’ you are talking about is the translation text domain.
I always associated wire with the telegraph. The Swedish translation has it as “kanal”, that’s channel in English. I changed it to “trÃ¥d” which translates to thread. In this context it is however closer to wire as in wireless communication which translates to “trÃ¥dlöskommunikation”. The Swedish word “vajer” simply don’t hold the communication meaning the word has in English.
Hello. Hmmm. Never thought of that. Let me go look at this.
(later)
I don’t see how that is possible. When bp does an ajax call it loads the wp environment and all plugins get fired up including bp. Doing all that loads the translation files if your site is setup that way. The call is in bp-core.php.
Suggest waiting for v1.0 before translating as odds are the readme.txt will be rewritten seeral times before then.
No side effects that I know of, though our setup is still \”young\” (only been live for just over a month) so I don\’t know the long-term implications yet.
One thing I will mention, though — if you site has been live for a while you\’ll have to do some SQL cleanup in the database to rename things that have been cached (like user activity). For example:
UPDATE wp_bp_activity_sitewide SET content = replace(content,\' wire:\',\' wall:\');
What do you have to do different now that you didn\’t before you had the faux translation?
Actually, the biggest difference is a positive one: instead of hand-changing all the instances of \”Wire\” in the plugin and theme files we keep that in the language file instead. Since the language file (and the bp-custom file) aren\’t in the BuddyPress SVN repo they will never get overwritten when we upgrade.
Ha! I knew it was a good idea. I do have one every once in awhile.
Any side effects of this we should know about Lance? What do you have to do different now that you didn’t before you had the faux translation?
To create a custom translation file just for the purpose of label changes, see my instructions in https://buddypress.org/forums/topic.php?id=1877#post-9927.
To be honest, that’s all I did with my translation was change “Wire” to “Wall” for the BuddyPress setup at Tucson Digital Arts Community.
@Trcwest
Here is how I did a custom translation to replace slugs and labels. I’m replacing my language name with spots so you can see how it would work for you.
1. First I opened the POT file, copied it to a .po version, and then made the changes I wanted in a text editor (most with search and replace, but also had to do some new lines by hand).
2. I uploaded the .po file to my web server, and ran this from a command line:
msgfmt -o buddypress-spots.mo buddypress-spots.po
3. In my bp-custom file (wp-content/mu-plugins/bp-custom.php) I added a language definition:
define( 'BPLANG', 'spots' );
if ( file_exists( ABSPATH . MUPLUGINDIR . '/bp-languages/buddypress-' . BPLANG . '.mo' ) ) {
load_textdomain( 'buddypress', ABSPATH . MUPLUGINDIR . '/bp-languages/buddypress-' . BPLANG . '.mo' );
}
4. Then I went into wp-content/mu-plugins/bp-languages and added the spots.mo file there.
This solution is better (in my opinion) than using the define (‘WPLANG’, ”); in your wp-config.php file, and won’t break when you upgrade BuddyPress.
The reason I suggested the translation route is that modifying the theme causes people to hesitate when upgrading. They don’t want to lose any custom they have. If I’m operating off a working copy of the svn trunk I can take my chances on an svn merge going ok. That it will skip my custom. However if my upgrade process is to replace the old code with the new code, just upload to the server, then I’m less likely to upgrade bp.
If it’s possible to achieve a solution without touching *any* code, I’m all for it. 
yes i want to doo this too andy…
You could create a custom translation file and rename everything how you like.
I am just wanting to know how to do it properly and as of yet i have not found a simple show how… that is how to edit the .pot and then impliment it..
im interested in using translation to change the words groups and group to spots and spot respectively..
so basically use the translation technique to change and customise what things are called on the site..
ipin, new translation files are generated frequently. Check the svn trunk for notifications such as this: POT, generated from r1247
I believe that one was generated this past Friday.
i made a french translation; Where can i give it to you ?
Dan
http://www.buddypress-fr.net
.mo and .po files downloadable from here:
http://buddypress-fr.net/bpdemo/2009/03/21/traduction-pour-buddypressdev/
The member theme and some core functions all refer to the main blog. The will use whatever translation is active on that blog.
Could this be done initially via a custom translation?
Hello all.
I had this same problem when I tried to use the Portuguese translation and this is how I fixed it.
1) Remove all your bp widgets.
2) Open translation.po
3) Find bp-core/bp-core-widgets.php (it is mentioned many times and write down the line numbers)
4) Open mu-plugins/bp-core/bp-core-widgets.php
5) Translate manually the lines where the translation file was supposed to do it.
6) re-upload mu-plugins/bp-core/bp-core-widgets.php
7) activate widgets that now will be named on your translation language e.g. “welcome” will be “Bienvenido”
send me a beer!
Voila!
I’ve updated the files as I found a small error (no space before “medlemmar”).
how are “the settings…” set??
I use the Poedit to do the translation. I always get this error message.
11:23:10: 
wampwww8phetwp-contentmu-pluginsbp-languagesbuddypress-vi.po:844: a format specification for argument 1 doesn’t exist in ‘msgstr’
11:23:10: wampwww8phetwp-contentmu-pluginsbp-languagesbuddypress-vi.po:2566: a format specification for argument 1 doesn’t exist in ‘msgstr’
11:23:10: msgfmt: found 2 fatal errors.
I believe that related to Settings…. But I don’t know how to set it.
Can someone help please.
thanks
Anybody have any suggestions on this? I’m just looking to change the term ‘Friends’ to ‘Contacts’ throughout the install. I’m not really in need of a ‘translation’ per se – just an update to the existing default terms. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
‘Trunk’ means the latest development build in the SVN repository, which you can access and ‘check out’ here:
https://svn.buddypress.org/trunk
More information about using SVN here: https://codex.wordpress.org/SVN
I have no idea what that means? 
