About help article ID: 708 | Published On: Oct 6, 2009
Can I Change the Language of the Theme Text in Shopping Cart Designer?

"Shopping Cart Designer is purely a design program, so you cannot edit any text in it, period."

This information gives me the impression of you not appreciating that your software is used in countries using other languages than your own. Why can't you just make a file in the Creator program with two fields per record stating "Program Key Text" and "Display Text"? In such a file I would be able to put my Norwegian words or phrases next to your "Shop Home", "Categories", "Wiew Cart", "QTY", "PRICE", etc. etc. Not too difficult for a bright gang like you, eh?

It is more difficult then you think. Not every word uses the same number of characters in each language. We may have text for a specific feature that can hold say 5 characters. When that is then translated, the new word maybe 10+ characters. That then breaks the layout. Once the layout breaks, we then get angry people telling us they are losing millions of dollars per day because their shop looks bad.

We do have some ideas on how to address this, but it won't be an overnight fix.

I hear what you are saying but it is hard to believe that you make software for developing public web pages for use in the year 2010 where visible text has such limitations in number of characters. But if text changes are hard to do in Shopping Cart Creator due to problems in the design I hope you will find it easier in the development of the Shopping Cart Designer where I myself am supposed to be in the control of - and responsible for - the layout. I guess by saying this I reveal the fact that I have not really tried out the Designer program yet but I was a little set out when reading the text I quoted in my previous entry. Even if this issue does not have an easy fix I hope it won't take to long because without this fix (in Creator or Designer) this software is not worth much in a non-English environment. And I do not want this issue to reduce my long time positive attitude to you and your products. Period.

Hi
One day I've done a software translation and it is as Scott says, really difficult to fit the new language at original space (example: "new tab" (english) "novo separador" (portuguese) ) and sometimes the space is critical.
Regards

Ok, but remember, you are not going to translate anything, you are going to extend the usability of your software. The software itself should continue being in English (US or UK does not matter either). It is the fields showing text to the end user that should no longer be hardcoded in any language. You should instead give us tables inside your software products where you in the first text column present your (English) default text and in the second column give us the opportunity to enter the text we want to present. If the second column field is blank then the software will present the default text, if not the text from that field will be presented. All these fields should be without limitations in number of characters. If I enter a too long text string for the layout to handle I will see the negative effect on the resulting page and understand that I have to shorten it. Smart use of CSS should however make the layout as flexible as possible to deal with text elements of greater length than normal English words and phrases, within limits of cause.

I think it is slowly starting to sink in with Coffeecup, that they lose out on a large amount of International sales by the language limitations, particularly so with the English only shopping cart creator.

Having user definable titles would certainly open up the scope, as some people may prefer the term basket or trolley to cart etc. Having that sort of enhancement as a user definable module would be one way of keeping the burden (and complexity) from the main program itself perhaps?

Hi everybody (i'm french sorry for my english) and a new user since today.

i have create a small software for translate shop (see : http://www.ilos-micro.com/shop/viewitem … roductid=0)

if you are interested it's free just for help ( it's only a changing word software no code modification an no garante just for testing )

that's excellent !!! tell us more !!

with respect to layon49, I occasionally, just for small areas of text, use the Google translate. I have to say that it has been pretty good for Italian/French, but don't know how it copes with other languages. I was looking for some Japanese yesterday.... I put in the English text... hit the button for translate and got a line of what I assumed to be Japanese. I then wanted to do a reverse check, so copied my "Japanese" into the translator from Japanese into English... hit the button, and the translator comes back telling me that it was Chinese!
So the moral is, don't feel 100% confident with the results!

Hi !

this is a small software who analyse and change only caption and label in finals php files after you can put this file with ftp

in french : http://www.ilos-micro.com/shop/

it's not 100% active but it's just the first day, if you want to try you can get this to :