I just got started with Ghost and installed a theme.
Now I see that all is in English.
Is there any guide available that guides me through all the steps to complete the translation?
Is it even possible to translate everything?
If not that would be a deal breaker.
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Hi Marc!
Have a look here:
You’d probably need to translate the theme and then see if the other areas mentioned in there are relevant for your use case 
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Can I do this in the hosted version or I need to install it on my own server?
Thanks!
Depends a little bit.
If you specifically want to translate your theme, you’ll need to upload some themes:
That specifically only works if your hoster allows custom themes. On Ghost(Pro) that doesn’t work on the Starter plan, but on all the higher ones.
Are there any guidelines available that discuss the pros and cons of hosted versus self-hosted approach?
I can’t find it on ghost.org
Found it here Hosting a Ghost publication - Fully-managed PaaS & self-hosted
so clearly ghost is much better option for me.
I just hope I can translate everything into German.
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To be fair, this is discussing the difference between the Ghost Foundation’s hosting product – Ghost(Pro) – and self-hosting.
There are quite a few options “in-between”, from managed infrastructure, to other managed hosting solutions. I wrote about it earlier this year here:
Additionally, @Cathy_Sarisky has recently written a blog post about it (and while my own hosting service is mentioned in there, I honestly find it one of the most honest and practical reports on the topic, since she also goes through the whole spectrum):
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I just started my site marc-lustig.ghost.io
and I’m struggling to translate all into German
In particular
where to translate “sign in” and subscribe button?
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That looks like Source, and those buttons are provided by the theme (not by /ghost > settings > navigation, which is where you can fix ‘home’ and ‘about’). Unfortunately, the official themes are not wrapped with translation strings.
If you can load a custom theme and otherwise like the look of Source, there’s a fork that has translation strings available here:
(It’s not the most recent version of Source, however.)
There are also lots of great paid themes that have the translations built in.
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Can I search for themes which are translatable?
In the official themes catalog I can’t find indications whether it’s fully translatable or not.
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I don’t believe any of the official themes are set up for translations. If you’re a Ghost Pro customer and want an official theme that’s set up for translations, you should tell them so! :)
If you can load a custom theme but want a free one, check Liebling.
/Most/ paid themes seem to have translation strings or already be translated - check that theme’s sale page to confirm before you buy, of course!
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Dear Ghost team,
I have used the Portal Translation feature in Lab to translate my entire page from English to German language.
Most of the website is translated successfully - so far so good.
However, there are some things that Ghost customer service tells me is not possible to translate or delete which basically means Ghost is useless for anyone from Germany.
It is absolutely crazy that this cannot be changed or deleted!
-
Portal: “Month” will always occur, they say this cannot be changed to “Monat”
-
Portal: “Save” will always occur, they say this cannot be changed to “Spare”
-
Portal: “Choose a Plan” will always occur when trying to upgrade from a lower to a higher tier, they say this cannot be changed to “Wähle eine Option”
-
Search bar: in the search bar, there will always be the English text, it is not possible to customize it to German
-
E-Mail fields: in the e-mail fields, there will always be the English text “jamie@example.com”, it is not possible to customize it to German, e.g. “Deine E-Mail-Adresse”
Best,
Peter
I’m not the Ghost team. 
(Sorry for replying anyway!)
I think items 1-3 should be covered by the translation efforts underway for Portal.
I’m guessing that what Ghost Pro support told you (should have told you?) was that those strings aren’t currently wrapped. I submitted a PR a year ago that fixed the /month problem and several other missing strings, but it didn’t get merged. (It’s possible that some other PR duplicated mine - I don’t know.) I’d assume that the goal is to get everything translatable in Portal.
4 - the search bar is a separate app (sodo-search). If you add a custom search integration, it can use whatever language you like. There used to be lots of themes that included their own search functionality, but with the addition of sodo-search, most people don’t use it any more. Here’s an example: GitHub - jamwise/ghostHunter: A Ghost blog search engine
5- if this is in your theme, you can change it. If this is in Portal, you can’t.
Thanks Cathy.
Their response to #1-3 was the following:
“For the ‘Save 18%’ and ‘Choose a plan’, and other Portal related elements that are not already translated via the beta Portal translation feature, I’m afraid that these can not be adjusted. However, the Portal translations feature is still currently in beta , and a project that is continually being worked on.”
They launched this quite a long time ago, so not very hopeful it will be adjusted to the correct version soon, especially since you have also submitted a request a year ago…
#5: you’re right, but it makes only sense if it is consistent, you I changed it back to the original version