There are many active translations out there of the PHP documentation. Some languages are being maintained by a group of translators (eg. the German), some are one person projects (eg. the Japanese). There are quite a few things for translators to know, though these are simple.
Starting a new language translation comes down to the following simple steps:
Consult the phpdoc mailing list to see if the translation is already in progress. If it is, read our tips for that case, disregard the following and coordinate with the other translators on the translation mailing list.
Ask for a CVS account. Mention that you would like to start a new translation.
After you have received your CVS account, ask [email protected] to create a new phpdoc-LANGCODE CVS module, and a new doc-LANGCODE mailing list for the new translation.
Check out the modules named phpdoc and phpdoc-LANGCODE (using the phpdoc-LANGCODE-dir alias) as described in the CVS chapter of this HOWTO.
Copy en/language-defs.ent and en/language-snippets.ent to the new directory (visible as phpdoc/LANGCODE in your file system) and translate the contents of them.
Copy over files from the English tree and start to work on them, (do not check in untranslated files) and rerun configure each time you add a file. See the section about revision tracking for help about how can you ease your work of tracking the English version and your language's version.
Some important issues to consider when building a new translation:
Can you set up and translate the whole manual yourself? If not, can you set up a team to work on the language (recommended!)?
Have you made sure that your language or glyph (lettering, font, or characters) is supported by the DocBook stylesheets? Please ask on the mailing list if you don't know.