It is good if you want to have same content in all languages.
If you want to have different contents for different languages, this is not a solution.
I've read the documentation, how to make different content for different languages, but it simply not worked.
I have on my site english, romanian, turkish, kurdish.
I have done Sections for all languages.
let them be romanian, english, kurdish, turkish.
In these sections I've added categories for all articles, novels, poems and so on.
I have done a menu item in the main menu and made it of section layout type.
I've linked this menu in original of english section.
After I have gone in the translation and translated this menu item in other languages and chanded its section to the coresponding one.
This are the steps from the documentation.
All things all right.
I've runned the site, The interface comes up in english, i've changed the language
the content from the first page comes out in the other language let say romanian.
After this I've clicked on the menu item i've created and the section "romanian" come up with is categories.
Very well. at this step, I've changed the language back in english.
All the content changed the language, but the section displayed was the same "romanian" section with articles in Romanian.
I've expected that the content will be changed it self and the section displayed will be english.
Also the lac of the filtering by language the interface is very bad.
Because if you have a menu in english and you don't want it to be displayed in german, you have no chance, but change your template and add for every language an if else, or to try to do sort of conventions to automaticaly filter elements.

I have tried and - sadly, most of the time - discarded this component over the last couple of years since J! 1.0.

There are three main reasons why I discarded the Fish time and again:

1. Very poor documentation
Setup is everything but easy. The component simply does not what it advertises and being forced to explain every step of the way to our editors anew every time gets extremely unnerving.

2. The concept of "Never change a running configuration" seems to be completely lost with this component. New features are constantly added without being thought through and without being properly documented.
A good example is the way you always have to pick your default language in a different way and still end up with the wrong one. Where do I pick my site's and the backend's default language? And why does it state "Site default language: German" and still consider any original content to be English? (No, my site is NOT set to English as the default language. And, NO, my site's backend is NOT set to English as the original language!)

3. - but this is, hopefully, only a temporary grievance - the component obviously only supports a very limited subset of PHP/mySQL. Unfortunately, not all hosting providers care about the component's preferences if it comes to the version of PHP/mySQL.

So, the concept itself is great and I can't even begin to imagine the amount of work and love the developers put into it. But sometimes less definitely is more and I would love to see the developers concentrate more on the components core functionalities and thoroughly structure their work. Maybe then, once the component really works without constant glitches, my review will be more enthusiastic.

Ragards,
Axel

Great extension, big thanks to developers!

Hi, I apologize for my poor english.
I installed Joomfish 5 days ago. At first, it took me some time to get familiar with all the issues, but once you understand how it works it's easy. It does not require any skill but one: organisation. If you start to jump from menus to contents then back to menus then to modules and then make changes to the original content(yes sometimes you have to!")...it will become a hell because you will get the "orginial changed" message everywhere and you will be discouraged. So make sure that the original content is final (or almost) then go by the menus, categories, content, etc...in other words the base joomla first and 3rd partys or whatever after. Also, you will often not understand why the "original changed" message appears: this is usually because you didn't check all the parameters on the transaltion page, thus you have to go down the page and check every aspects of the translation, not just the pure content. Finaly, I tried it on a dummy website first, then started the tranlation on my real website once I got all the aspects. It was easy. Thanks again for this wonderful extension.

Both Joomfish and Community Builder are on all lists for the most favored extensions for Joomla, however they don´t work together. I have a bi-lingual site (English & Spanish) for which I use Joomfish for the translations. Most all extensions I have installed up until now have worked well in both languages. Not so Community Builder - a seemingly good extension - and popular, but in my case, and as I have gleaned from the forums - in many cases, not usable because of the translation problem. Any chances in the future of simple method that Joomfish can be incorporated into Community Builder, like in so many other extensions???

I voted low because unlike most of the joomla extensions this is not easy to setup. There are lots of support docs to read but none actually helped that much.
In the end I gave up and used the google module.
When I eventually decided not to use this and uninstalled it the site went blank and all I was able to see was the backend admin part. Took a while to figure out how to restore the site and its this that prompted me to write a review.

Looks great but needs an expert to get it to work.
I think if they offered to setup for you then it would be the best way to go about translating your site.

Joomfish is one of the best extensions i use.
It is a very strong translating extension since you can almost translate everything in your website.
I even managed to translate a automatic date&time script in the footer of my website.
At first, joomfish seems a bit confusing, but with some logical thinking and testing you should manage to get it setup easily.
Howto use joomfish: First of all, design and create a website like you normally do. When finished, install joomfish, and enable it.
Joomfish translations are like a layers that lie upon your original site.
Install the core joomla languages that you want to use as translation. Set the default language (preferably your foreign language) in the extensions - languagecontrol section of your backend.
Then go into joomfish then joomfish languages, and set the primairy - secondary (and so on) languages.
Then go into the translate section. Now pay attention to the following, you have to select a language from languages - select language drop down box. Select your primaire language. Then in the other drop down menu (records/select state dunno i use the dutch language dont know in english) select which part of your website you want to edit like menu/modules/content etc. When using primairy language and setting up primaire translation, just copy all (joomfish has a copy option). Set the location of your language selection buttons. Select primairy language, publish it, and test it in frontend. If all is fine set the secondary language in the drop down menu. Set the items you want to translate in the second drop down box. Open the corresponding items and fill out the form. Publish all translations and your done.
You can translate almost everything in your website, from contents, menu's, module's, fill out forms, custom html etc.
I suggested translating and publishing the primairy language first which should be the same language your website is in. This easily let you see what is happening and how, thus making it eassier setting things up for secondary language (the actual translation).
Since some users complain it is difficult to use or its hard to setup i felt the need to explain a few things.
Take your time and read, also try things out. As i mentioned before, joomfish creates a layer over the normal website, thus you cannot destroy anything in your "normal" website configuration.
It really isn't hard to setup and i really don't understand what problems some people have seting it up. If one needs help setting it up add me on joomla forum under sebastianv.
Excellent extension!!!!
Sidenote: Do not use with sh404sef. sh404sef messes up things, which ends up in a buggy website. sh404sef creators have not come up with a solution although problems allready exist for a long period of time.

joomfish is without doubt one of the best components around. Easy to install and works well with joomla 1.5 SEF module. Also, well documented. When downloading this extention don't forget to download the language pack for your preferred language and install into 'language' in the joomla directory folder. Thanks Joomfish Team, you saved me and others a lot of time when developing multi-language websites.

I could now support translations of my site in english and german without any problems.....cool!

So much talk about what cinch it is to set up REALLY MAKES ME FEEL LIKE A COMPLETE IMBECILE, 2 straight days and nites and nothing. It's exactly what we need but...we've set up 5 local hosts 1 after another and nothing but English shows up in the Language Configuration. It looks sounds and is a excellent tool, cause we've seen it working on other sites. It's odd that after seemly endless hours of research we haven't found any explanation and no one has responded to our pleas for help. We're happy for all you who have it going on, wish we could share the joy. Richar rraymon4@yahoo.com

Joomfish is a good solution but it has some weaknesses in my opinion:
1- It is not a user-friendly one. Difficult to understand some parts. UI could be integrated to the core Joomla.
2- There are 2 tables in DB and all records are stored mainly in the table jos_jf_content thus creating a huge number of raws for a single translation, say a menu item. In my case I have skipped some but I have 4 records for a menu item translation. I have not tried a content item buty it may be bigger than this. So this kind of approach will result in a huge db in no of records and size. This table can be splitted to a number of tables as it is in Joomla.

I found this a most useful extension and it seem to work good. But above all support is great, you get replies in quit a short time, and the people are always willing to help.

I am not long using the extension so about updates and development I do not have a good insight but my guess is that the product is evolving.

Nice module, almost perfect. Can some other modules which i install after or aren't in joomla basic instalation be translated trough Joom!Fish?

Thanks a lot!

I have installed many extensions on my two sites and this one is probably the most difficult one I had to install. I found the documentation extremly poor and it had huge gaps in which it presumed I knew what it was talking about.

After a couple hours, I finally just gave up.

The only thing that seemed to work well was the uninstall feature and I can give the unistall feature a Rave review as it removed all the components and modules.

Some of the reviews below give the impression that this component does not work. I can assure you that it does in every respect. It provides translations to all standard Joomla content and menus.

There is a problem, the problem however, is a strange one. For a component that supports translation the product documentation requires some improvement in it's own translation. It is confusing and counter-intuitive. The chap below who is experiencing the wrong translation has made a standard error that can be fixed easily enough by configuring the component correctly. It is not his fault that it is confusing, he made the same mistake that I originally did... putting a Spanish translation in the English section.

If the documentation was to undergo a review and be translated correctly then I think the product would be much easier to implement.

Yereverluvinunclebert

I have a big problem in translating other components in joomfish such as porfolio, and artforms. I haven't tried other componets to translate but im stuck to these one's.
Other than that I love it, it has done a preety good jog to the website that im working on.
Thx

I was really excited about this program because of all the hype around it. I actually thought this would do the job. However, it defaults to en-GB and it's impossible to remove it. Also, the translated articles do not show up correctly. When you view the site in the original language, the translated article shows up! When you view the article in the translated language the original language shows up with a message underneath the article title that there isn't a translated version! I spent ALL NIGHT LONG trying to get this program to function correctly. I even spent hours going through the code and reprogramming the whole thing just so that it would default to en-US. But even after I finally managed to get that working, there was still the problem of showing the wrong pages! This program's heart is in the right place but it's a total waste of time.

I must say this is most worth full joomla component of all. without this extension it would be very hard to create multilingual sites. 5 thumbs up.

Does exactly what you want it to do! Easy to use and makes all translated content easy to manage. Have a look at my company's site to see it in action with English, German & Chinese:
www.libs-international.com
Thanks :)

jamie

That's one minute to install and the remaining 29 checking out the online tutorial and checking backwards and forwards. I'm based in Wales which means anything for the public sector, and any major voluntary organisations have to be bilingual English/Welsh, so this is going to be a huge help.

Only problem is that the Welsh language translation is only a Beta and there's a few bits missing, so I'm going to have to do my bit for the community and help translate what's remaining.

Diolch!