Boonex Discovers Error in Translated Language Files!

In the process of doing a build, we realized that with over 2500 Language Keys, purchasing a translation would be useless as a base Dolphin has nowhere near that many Language Keys (which is what a Language File comes with is the base LK's) and if we did then we'd have to delete and re-add approximately 600 English LK's to the system due to how Dolphin created them.

So, we did the next best thing, we stopped all development in other areas and began the translation to the other languages.  The first Language up was Italian, just because it's a fun Language and would be a good test to see how UTF-8 worked in regards to the unique characters.  We're now in the German Translation and finding that UTF-8 works awesome.  But that wasn't the issue, the issue was an error that happened only in Italian, and no other language.

When a member was on a "Profile Page" and attempted to leave a comment, they would click the _Add a comment LK and instead of opening up the little JS window to write a comment, it would instead take them to the home page.  What?  How did that happen?  Especially since everything was working perfect before the translation and when the site was put into English it worked great also (the site has a language switcher on it that members can click, but not the issue here either).  So how in the world can this happen?  After all, the code is the same regardless of the Language, we're only altering LK's here.

But, that is not a true statement, because when you alter LK's you do alter code in some of them if your not careful.  So off we go to start checking LK's.  We checked 2,558 LK's and everyone of them came back as being correct.  No href's we're altered, all compared to their English counterparts and now this really did not make sense.  We've actually worked on this since Friday not realizing the issue was right in front of our faces and it's even been used multiple times in this post.  Actually, everytime I've typed LK's (like that) the issue has been right in front of me.  The most amazing thing, it didn't even have to do with comments so to say.  Here was the translation causing the issue, it's actually kind of ironic on the one that caused it:

L'errore ha accaduto

Note the apostrophe ( ' ) that was used in the translation?  That was the issue.

Instead it should of been:

L`errore ha accaduto

Utilizing an accent ( ` ) instead of an apostrophe in the new translation.  This key had no href on it, it had no {0} or such on it, nothing.  Just a key saying an error has occured.  Nothing more and nothing less.

In the end, I nor my team found this problem.  Instead, after looking at it all weekend contact was made Sunday evening (my time, Monday workday Australia time) with Boonex who found it to be an interesting problem so they took a look at it for us.  The Boonex team is the one who discoverd this issue, one that we spent countless hours repeatedly looking for and it was so tiny yet so blatantly obvious that it was completely overlooked. 

As it turns out, you can not use an "apostrophe"  ( '  ) in the LK's without taking precautions for it or anticipating errors happening.  I took a look at the language files to see the reason, it's literally a blatant fact that it's not a good idea to do this. 

My Italian Language file has 2,558 LK's in it, to display the reason I'm going to show you what just one of them in the file langs/lang-it.php looks like:

'_Block' => 'Blocco',

Notice all the apostrophe's in that line?  There are 4 of them, signalling the beginning and end of the items.  So if we we're to type

'_Block' => 'B'locco',

as an example, then that LK would look like the letter "B" and then an error after it as   

locco',

would not have a key to reference.  Now what is the proper way to use an apostrophe?  Not sure, as I know that Boonex has done it but I'll have to look at LK's to figure that out when it comes to other ones.  We see the word member's all the time.  But in this instance, it was the error.

Just wanted to share what happened with everyone and give a huge thanks to Boonex for finding this error.  It really was a small item, but it was a huge issue also.  I can't say thank you enough for this to Boonex and it's saved us countless more hours in looking for the issue.