How to Translate Your Website Contents into Various Languages Using Joomla 1.7

Joomla 1.7 does not require JoomFish or other components to enable multilingual support. This support is built in Joomla 1.7 natively, although we don't find it particularly intuitive. There is a couple of steps that one needs to know to get it all going smoothly.

Below is a simple step-by-step summary of how to enable multilingual feature in Joomla 1.7:

1. Login to your website, from the Control panel go to Extensions > Extension Manager 
2. Install a Language pack. You need a separate language pack for each language. Download language packs from here:
   • http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/languages/translations-for-joomla
   • http://community.joomla.org/translations.html
3. After you’ve installed the required language pack(s), go to Extensions > Language Manager
4. In Language Manager, select the Content tab, create a new item corresponding to the language you’ve installed.
5. From the main Control panel, go to Menus and create a New Menu for the required language (or, if the second-language menu has already been created, create a Mew Menu Item for this language menu). You need a separate menu for each language, and they will all be listed under Menus.
6. This step is very important! After you’ve created the second (third, forth, etc.) language menu items, you need to associate them with one another.
7. NOTE: Joomla has one Home page by default. If you are adding another language, you need to create a corresponding Home page for that language.
8. To add Articles in various languages, simply go to Article Manager, Add New Item, and specify the language. Connect it with the corresponding Menu item in the same language, as usual. Define Alias contents manually, if you wish. Add meta data, keywords, etc.