Liferay: How to update translations without redeploy of language hook?

Question

I'm looking for simple way to update custom translations in Liferay without redeploy of language hook. Restart is no option for me too :).

UPDATE:

The customer has quite big portal with about 50 different portlet-applications. Each application has rich user interface in four languages. Together the portal has about 800 keys that must be translated. For this translation work the customer has specific department that works with appropriate tools. This tools can generate Liferay compliant property files.

Furthermore, by 800 key-words / translations, that is frequently necessary to change the translation.

Hence, I'm looking for method to update UI translations live - on the fly. Without redeploy of language-hook and without restart the Liferay.

Answer 1

If you're thinking of translating the content that you already enter to your portal, that's already changeable through the UI, no hook or anything necessary. However, as you mention hooks I believe that this is not what you're looking for.

Redeploy of a language hook is the simple option to update the application's language (i.e. Liferay's own UI). You can hot-deploy a language hook without restarting the server. All the other solutions I can think of are at least an order of magnitude more complex and would involve program code that overrides the mechanics how Liferay looks up translated UI elements.

IMHO you can choose either one, "simple" or "no redeploy of a hook". You can't eat your cake and have it, too.

Update (after your update): What I described above is Liferay's mechanism, which you're free to use or to ignore. If your plugins have specific needs that their translation must be updated without the plugins being updated at all, you're free to choose any different language lookup mechanism of your choice. The Liferay mechanism - in this case - might not be what you need to use. Or you'll need to talk to your business users and get their information on how often they believe that the translation will be required to update when the plugins stay unchanged. Or how often they are prepared to redeploy the plugins (and if they can wait for this amount of time)