I’ve started to translate bbPress into Swedish, using existing translations from previous versions (pre 0.9.0.3) and found that it is more difficult than expected to find exact translations for some very commonly used forum keywords.

The fact that I’ve been on the web since Mosaic 0.9 did – surprisingly not – make this easier…I’ve searched the web but couldn’t find any generic definitions of these words that tell the actual difference between i.e a post, a discussion and a thread. And what also surprises me is that not any translators (or regular forum members) seem to have asked this before.

• topic
• post
• discussion
• (thread)

I’d appreciate if you (bbPress) forum gurus could clearly define what is actually meant with each keyword above. I included the keyword “thread”, although it isn’t used in bbPress.

I realize that a the keywords represent a certain generic forum hierarchy but the definitions would really help me out to finish off the work I’ve started.

[@chrishajer Participant 15 years, 6 months ago]

Here’s my take on it, but I’m no guru.

• A topic is a collection of posts.
• A post is a single entry related to a topic. A post is also referred to as a reply.
• A discussion is a topic (I believe the two are synonymous.)
• A thread on some boards is a topic on bbPress.
• A forum is a collection of topics related to a subject.
• A bbPress installation can be a group of forums.

[@johnhiler Member 15 years, 6 months ago]

Yah, chrishajer nailed it!

One of the weirdest adjustments for me using bbPress was figuring out the difference between posts and topics:

* A topic is what bbPress calls the entire thread/discussion.

* A post is what bbPress calls each individual piece of content in the topic – whether it be the first post creating the thread, or a comment on it.

So for example, a newly created thread would count as one topic and one post. If someone comments on it, then it becomes one topic with two posts.

If you ever want to calculate the number of comments per topic, you have to subtract out the first post from the number of posts. So for example, suppose a thread/topic had 12 posts. That actually means that it has one post that started it off, and 11 comments.

At least, that’s how I parse all of this! Good luck with the translations!

[@plrk Member 15 years, 6 months ago]

Actually I just finished a Swedish translation file. I’ll post it in here within the hour or so…

[@plrk Member 15 years, 6 months ago]

See this topic for Swedish translation files: https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/swedish-translation-completed-bbpress-10-rc-3