How can I modify a translated field name (Assignee)?

[Tommy Nordahl]

Hi,

We have deployed the Swedish language pack and while most of the translations are ok there are one that we just can't accept.

The field Assignee is traslated to Tilldelad which means Delegated or Delegated to.

It should be translated to the Swedish word Ansvarig or Ägare which means Responsible or Owner.

That would be a much better interpretation of the English word Assignee.

Is there anyway I can go in under the hood and fix this myself without having to wait for a new version of the language pack?

Br

Tommy

[Penny Wyatt (On Leave to July 2021) · Accepted solution]

Hi Tommy,

Definitely. Language packs are just text files zipped up into a .jar file. Here's how you can get at the guts of them:

1) Find the .jar file for the Swedish language pack you installed. If you installed it via the Plugins web interface then it will be in the plugins directory in your JIRA Home. If you installed it by drag-dropping it into the JIRA install directory, it will most likely be in atlassian-jira\WEB-INF\lib . It should be called language_sv_SE.jar or something similar.

2) Expand the jar into a directory. Depending on your platform and the tools you have available, you may need to change the file extension to ".zip" before the OS will realise it's a zip and let you expand it.

3) In the expanded directory structure, look for a file called JiraWebActionSupport.properties. Open it in a text editor.

4) In the file, search for "issue.field.assignee" and change the value to the preferred translation.

5) Zip the directory back up again and give it a .jar file extension.

6) Compare your zipped directory with the original .jar to make sure the directory structure is exactly the same (e.g. no extra root directory at the top).

7) Make a backup of the original .jar (important!)

8) Replace the jar with your new version.

9) Restart JIRA.

This will change the name of that field only; if you want to be consistent across all UI text (e.g. help messages or error messages) you can search the rest of the file for other references to Tilldelad and also change them to Ansvarig.

Best wishes,
Penny

[jjaroczynski]

Hi Tommy,

It you want to fix or change any translation and make your change public then you can simply go to the http://translations.atlassian.com, make a change, download language pack and install it via UPM. There is no need for manual digging in the jar files nor JIRA restart.

You may also find useful InProduct translation plugin for JIRA we have just released.

It allows to translate JIRA right from its page so you can see all messages and provided translations live in a second. Just install the plugin in JIRA, select "Translate Page" from the user profile menu in JIRA and start translations.

The plugin is available in marketplace: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.atlassian.translations.jira.inproduct
You can install it from the UPM. It works with JIRA 5.1+.

Cheers,
Jacek

[Yogesh]

Thanks for your feedback.. was there any perticular file you had to modify? It would really help if you could elaborate on the steps you took to resolve the issue.

Thanks again

[jjaroczynski]

No modifying files. I simply used IPT to translate these messages separately.

In order to find a message key I used i18n mode which force JIRA to display i18n key next to the real message. Hence I knew these were separate messages.
You can enable this mode with i18ntranslate=on parameter added to the url in the browser. It can be disabled with i18ntranslate=off.

Let me know if you need more information. We should probably create docs describing all the details.

Cheers,
Jacek

[jjaroczynski]

Hello Yogesh,

Unfortunately not translated "Create Issue" is a separate message (with separate i18n key) and therefore needs to be translated separately. This is independent from IPT.

There are two keys:

• admin.issue.operations.create (for create issue popup)
• createissue.title (for separate create issue page)

I tried to translate both of them with IPT and everything worked fine. Let me know if have more questions.

Cheers,
Jacek

[Yogesh]

Hello Jacek,

I liked the ITP, but it does not seem to translate everything I needed to. I wanted to change every instance of word "Issues" to "Work Item", but using the plugin, it worked for most of it but left it unchanged to few important location. For example when I click on "Create Work Item" (translated), it still shows "Create Issue" on the form. Is there something I can do to fix this? I will absolutely love this tool if it will work for me. Thanks.