BuddyPress.org

Is it possible to create a translation-like language file to help tweak BuddyPress language throughout the core?

In customizing BuddyPress, I keep hitting roadblocks related to language choices. In many places, it seems like it’s very difficult to change hard-coded language without registering a whole group of new functions and unregistering official BuddyPress ones.

The most recent problem is that I could not change the default “Search anything…” without creating a customized bp_dtheme_ajax_querystring() function and a customized bp_directory_forums_search_form() It was impossible to simply make a cosmetic change on the search form because BP interprets “Search anything…” as an actual search string unless both of those functions are kept in sync with hard-coded language.

The other problem I have now is customizing activity stream language, which apparently will require hand editing of multiple files distributed across the BuddyPress core. Each of these could require custom my_buddypress_functions() so I don’t lose my changes every time the core is updated.

There should be a way to make language changes without creating a my_buddypress_function() and unregistering “official” buddypress functions every time you want to make a small change. If nothing else I’m a little worried about overhead of creating a large bp-custom.php file or theme functions.php file.

The way some other community/forum packages solve this is to create a language file that you can customize according to your needs, either through an admin panel or by directly editing the language.php file. I’m wondering if this has ever been discussed. I see the “Translation” sticky is no longer sticky and I wonder if that thread contained a similar idea. Can anybody weigh in on translation and how this works with BP? Thank you!