too long

I've built a simple component that sends an email. Inside that component I have my translations strings stored in the ini. Here is some sample code of what I do:

$body = $this->getDetails["name"]." ".JText::_('COM_MYCOMPNOTIFY_MAIL_BODY1')."

".
JText::_('COM_MYCOMPNOTIFY_MAIL_BODY2')." ".$this->getDetails["name"]."

".
JText::_('COM_MYCOMPNOTIFY_MAIL_BODY3')." http://".$this->getDetails["domain"]."
";

This directory structure I have for my component has

language
  en-GB
    en-GB.com_mycompnotify.ini
  pt-BR
    pt-BR.com_mycompnotify.ini

My install xml file has this:

<files folder="site">
        <filename>index.html</filename>
...
        <folder>helpers</folder>
        <folder>language</folder>
</files>

This works fine for the en-GB language. But I can't get it to translate for pt-BR. I think the issue is that I have an external php file that calls my component. So it wouldn't know to load pt-BR language file (I think).

So I tried to force it to load:

$lang = JFactory::getLanguage();
$lang->load('com_mycompnotify', JPATH_BASE, 'pt-BR'); //also tried JPATH_SITE

But no matter what I try I always get English.

for specifying language files in component xml file you should add somthing like this :

<languages folder="admin">
    <language tag="en-GB">language/en-GB/en-GB.com_NAME.ini</language>
    <language tag="en-GB">language/en-GB/en-GB.com_NAME.sys.ini</language>
    <language tag="pt-BR">language/pt-BR/pt-BR.com_NAME.ini</language>
    <language tag="pt-BR">language/pt-BR/pt-BR.com_NAME.sys.ini</language>
</languages>

if you are developing a component Not just for administrator side only, you can add site languages files like this :

<languages folder="site">
    <language tag="en-GB">language/en-GB/en-GB.com_NAME.ini</language>
    <language tag="en-GB">language/en-GB/en-GB.com_NAME.sys.ini</language>
    <language tag="pt-BR">language/pt-BR/pt-BR.com_NAME.ini</language>
    <language tag="pt-BR">language/pt-BR/pt-BR.com_NAME.sys.ini</language>
</languages>

and for joomla to use the language files which aren't english you should change site's language to your native language.You can download translations for many languages from joomla's official site.