I came across Flarum when looking for some forum software for a new community.
So far I love what its capable of.
But there is one really important point that I want, that is unavailable in any other forum software.
I am a Product Manager with basic JS/TS/Vue dev skills (but not enough to do this), and so I am wondering if anyone is interested in working on this, with some basic funding, input, brainstorming etc from me.
I Work with multiple dev teams managing products, features, releases, sprints, QAs etc. so not a noob to the dev world.
The Extension
Auto Translation of posts.
It was bought up on the forums a few times.
Doing this would position Flarum as the only forum software that can truly support multi language.
TL;DR of it.
User A has language set to EN
User B has language set to ES
User A makes a post (in EN of course)
On post creation, API queries fired off to GTranslate of DeepL
Translations are saved in DB.
(Same function called on edit post)
User B browses and opens User A's Topic
UI shows the post translated text by extension in ES.
Admins can activate/deactivate languages. And select if Free GTranslate API or they input their DeepL API Key
USE CASE
I live on some islands. Lots of Expats here. Core languages: ES, EN, IT, DE
To be able to have open communication and a way of connecting rather than separating, translations of posts is necessary.
It will not be a large community (maybe 100 members maximum in 1 year) but with so many different languages it is hard to cross communicate.
Why this rather than chromes built-in translation or any other method?
One key thing to growing a thriving community is being able to search. No other methods or approaches support searching for something in your own language and having the system show you posts from another.
P.S. I will keep this discussion open for 1 week. If nobody responds or we do not find a team to build, I will outsource this to a dev team. Depending on the costs of that work, this would likely be released as a paid extension to recover the dev fees.