How to translate Confluence space names and categories and Refined Wiki subcategories?

[Carmen Rudolph]

Currently we are setting up an intranet for a customer in Confluence. As theme we are using the Refined Wiki plugin which displays a top navigation based on space categories and spaces.

We are using the bitvoodoo Language plugin to translate the page content and title.

But we would like to also  translate the Refined Wiki (demo) top menu, meaning space categories, subcategories and space names.

The following screenshot shows a sample navigation which should be translated like the page content e.g. into German "Einstieg, Übersicht, Projekte, Marketing, Vertrieb, Offene Stellen, Kommunikation" (it was originally taken from http://demo.refinedwiki.com/display/rwot/Assign+a+space+to+a+category and cropped to the navigation):refinedwiki_screenshot_small.png

The big question is how this is technically possible and how this can be achieved with the least effort.

I checked how the space (sub)categories are stored in our database: Their keys are stored as labels in the label table. The (sub)category names currently displayed in the menu are only stored in one big XML definition in the bandana table together with the (sub)category key:

…
 <category>
    <name>cr test category <name>
    <nameKey>crtestrefwikicategory<nameKey>
 …

Based on this knowledge I assume that the only possibility to achieve the translation feature would be to modify the html code in a very late phase on the server side (servlet filter): Exchange the (sub)category and space names by their translation based on the HTML element class/ids (as we do not have the category keys in the html code). Of course, the user interface for translating the categories and space names would also be needed to be build. Does anyone have a recommendation for this e.g. how to store the translations?

Does any one know a simpler solution for this problem or any plugin which allows a similar and translatable top navigation like Refined Wiki?

Has anyone an idea how we could change the space names into translated space names in general  in a plugin?  So not only for the top navigation based on editing the html but somehow by changing how Confluence looks up the space name (without editing and having to build the confluence core source code)?

[Carmen Rudolph]

Regrettably setting up spaces per language is not an option: There will be only very few pages translated at all and if so probably not into all languages but mostly only into English and German (though it might be in a few cases also other languages like Polish, Dutch, etc.).

Thank you very much for pointing out that Refined Wiki will change the way how categories are stored.

[Emil Sjödin _Refined_]

Hi Carmen,

If you already are translating all pages in a space with the language plugin I would recommend you to instead use two spaces, one english and one german. With space permission make sure that the english users only can view the english space. Then create two categories, "Projects" and one "Projekte", organize the english spaces into the english category and the german spaces to the german category. RefinedWiki will only renders categories that the user is permitted to view. English users will only see english categories and german users will only see german categories. This solution will also fix your problem with translating space names.

I would not recommend you to alter the category menu with a servlet filter or through the database. In the current version categories are stored with bandana but in the upcoming version categories will be stored using AO. 

Please let me know if you have any further questions. 

Best Regards,

Emil, RefinedWiki