BuddyPress.org

That *is* how it’s supposed to work. When you upgrade a WordPress plugin like BuddyPress, everything in the plugin folder is deleted and overwritten by the new content.

Language files should be stored in wp-content/languages (if you don’t have that directory, create it), where they will not be overwritten during upgrades.

I did this thinking that it would work like a child theme, but nothing seems to change… so I am assuming this is just for “storage”… ?

wp-content/languages/buddypress.pot

I’ve made a couple of changes in the language file but don’t see them on the site. No caching used.

> You need to convert that .pot into a .mo file.

I think that you also need to change the file name so that it includes a text domain, and then specify that textdomain in your config file. Eg, buddypress-BBG.mo, and `define( ‘WPLANG’, ‘BBG’ );` (I think.)