You basically want to translate it. Not sure how it’s done but there are a few translation threads around here. (Some changes you can also make in the theme but by no means all of them.)
I actually found it. The text can be found in the “template-functions.php” file.
It probably is. But what are you going to do when you need to update? If you make more changes? Could become very unwieldy very quick. Translation is the way to go.
Change it in your template.
Find your theme’s logged-in.php file. Look for bb_profile_link() and change it to
bb_profile_link( "Use my text instead" );
(If you’re using the default theme, first copy the bb-templates/kakumei/ directory to a new directory called my-templates/my-theme/, activate that new theme from the Presentation admin panel and edit those files instead).
where can i change this default text for these links at the bottom of topic.php:
<?php topic_delete_link(); ?> <?php topic_close_link(); ?> <?php topic_sticky_link(); ?>
i can’t find it except in template-functions.php, which i won’t ever touch again 
Funny you mention this… I’m doing some work for a client at the moment using WordPress and I wanted to change some of the admin backend text without modifying core files. Localization using an en.mo file turned out to be the way to go.
I believe bbPress supports localization as well. It’s probably going to be the route you’ll want to take. (edit: it does, BBLANG in config.php, drop the .mo file in /bb-includes/languages/ I would assume)
The file you’ll need to edit is a compiled binary, so you’ll have to get the bbpress.pot file, probably from the bbPress site somewhere. (edit: http://svn.automattic.com/bbpress-i18n/pot/tags/)
Once you’ve got the file, check out poEdit (http://sourceforge.net/projects/poedit/). It’s an open-source cross-platform mo/po/pot editor. Create a New catalog from .pot file, make sure the option to compile to .mo is checked in the preferences, and you should be good to go.
The top-left box contains the text to be translated, the bottom-left contains the “translation.” Ctrl-F, find the string, and you’re good from there.
Note: I haven’t tried this with bbPress but it works great with WordPress. Hope it helps.
worked like a CHARM. thank you so much.
one thing though, i just noticed. above all of my forms, the following text is appearing:
Project-Id-Version: POT-Creation-Date: PO-Revision-Date: 2007-07-23 13:42-0500 Last-Translator: NJO Language-Team: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
is there a way to get rid of that?
Most peculiar. I’ll look into it later.
Do you have a live example?
yeah, login with this info:
Your username is: supercoolman
Your password is: 1c46c2
You can now log in: http://www.manonfire.cc/sk6ers/
then click here:
http://www.manonfire.cc/sk6ers/topic.php?id=4&page&replies=3
it appears above the textarea box
i think that mysterious text appears when some kind of system text is missing:
for example, when i changed this line in login.php from:
<h2><?php isset($_POST) ? _e(‘Log in Failed’) : _e(‘Log in’) ; ?></h2>
to
<h2><?php isset($_POST) ? _e(‘Log in Failed’) : _e(”) ; ?></h2>
that crazy text appeared where ‘Log in’ should have been. hope this helps.
