The text of the email sent to a CB connection request is not easy to understand; I'd like to edit it, but can't find where it's stored; where is it?

well, that's where the language items are, for sure; but where is the email itself built? I found it eventually by using notepad ++ 's 'Find in Files' option [absolutely indispensible for this sort of thing]
root/components/com_comprofiler/plugin/user/plug_cbmenu/cb.menu.php [who'd have guessed?]
line 1135 builds the html to create the [horrible] blue form that displays when you click 'Send Request'; [the class is ".cb-tips-bg" so you could write some css to if you want to re-style it to display a more appropriate color background]
This form will submit your email, so this is where the message is built. Clicking the submit button calls the function 'cbConnSubmReq()'. Another Notepad++ search locates this function in root/components/com_comprofiler/comprofiler.html.php:
this is simply a function to submit the form; my particular form tag contents are:
'<form name="connOverForm" id="connOverForm" method="post" action="root/your-profile/addconnection.html?act=connections&amp;connectionid=63">'

the addconnection task is called in comprofiler.php at line 445:
'addConnection( $_CB_framework->myId(), (int) cbGetParam($_REQUEST,'connectionid'), ((isset($_POST)) ? cbGetParam($_POST,'message') : ""));'
and the function begins at line 3339 but the work is done at line 3365:
$cbCon=new cbConnection($userid);
$cbCon->addConnection($connectionid,stripcslashes($umsg));
So where is this cbConnection class? why, it's in the administrator folder
root/administrator/components/com_comprofiler/comprofiler.class.php
line 8517:
but the work is at line 8543 where the function insertconnection() is called:
which puts the conection in the database. line 8573 calls _notifyConnectionChange() at line 8589; and hey, here we are, building the email message!
well, almost; the function at line 9531 adds more and then calls _sendEmailMSG() at line 9733 where more formatting and language codes are added till at line 9763 the comprofilerMail() function is called. This function is at line 216 and it calls comprofilerCreateMail() at line 93 which creates the mail object and returns it to the comprofilerMail function where at line 324 the mail object's send method is called, and off it goes.

So there are three main places to configure the content of the message; lines 8589, 9531 , 9733; now I just need to figure out how to edit these lines and their language codes to get a message my users will understand -

well, no wonder it was difficult to find; I now know a lot more about the way CB works than I did this afternoon...

I was reluctant to change the source strings since I was not sure whether they were referred to elsewhere, especially the 'Manage Connections' field which was the one I especially wanted to change (to something like 'To accept or decline the connection go to:')
But my principle concern, based on user feedback, was to alter the order in which the strings were presented; it was suggested that the link to the 'from' usere should come after the 'manage connection' link;
All of this was thrown into confusion when I noted that users who were not logged-in would see the registration page as a result of clicking these links; I decided to remove the links altogether and replace them with a message like 'Please visit your profile page and follow the 'Connections>>Manage Connections' menu item to accept or decline this connection.'