Languages vs. Phrases
A language contains a collection of phrases. Specifically, a language contains all the phrases that vBulletin has, broken down into various groups of phrases. For example, there is a
Polls group that only contains phrases dealing with polls. You can specify the default language that guests will see; once a user is registered, he or she may change the language the board is displayed in.
Language settings apply to both the front-end and the control panels.
A phrase represents a single string containing text that could be translated. This may vary from a single word used on a button to an entire error message or email. Significant effort has been made to make phrases as gender-independent as possible, but there are still some problem areas. If you are trying to translate a phrase and having problems because of a language difference (such as a gender conflict), you may report it to us.
Some gender issues may not be addressable because vBulletin does not include a method to determine if a user is male or female. We recommend working around this by including both translations simultaneously. This is similar to saying 'him or her' or 'forum(s)' in English.