InternationalizationAn introduction to Drupal i18n

Russell Blakeboroughboblists@brightonart.org

Multilingual Drupal

• A Drupal site can run in a number of different languages.

• To see the languages installed on a site go to ‘Administer - Languages’:

• /admin/settings/language

Languages

Add a Language

• To add another language click on ‘Add language’ and select from the list.

• Go to drupal.org/project/Translations to download the latest translation of Drupal for that language.

• Then go to ‘Administer - Translate interface’ to import the translation:

• /admin/build/translate

Translate interface

Interface and Content

• A Drupal site’s users can select from the installed languages which one they’d like the Drupal interface to appear in.

• To translate a site’s content we use the ‘Internationalization’ module collection:drupal.org/project/i18n

• Here is a simple Dutch – English – French page viewed as admin:

Home page

Node Translations

• Users can select which language they’d like to see this page in.

• We’re using the i18n ‘Language Icons’ block here to display an automatic language switcher.

• To view translations of a node click on the Translate tab:

Translations of home

Adding translations

• If a node doesn’t have a translated version in a particular language yet, it will have an ‘add translation’ link for that language on the Translations page.

• Various forms of translation workflow are available to help keep different language versions of nodes in synchronization eg. Published - outdated

Add translation

Translating menus

• Multilingual pages can have multilingual menu items to point to them.

• With the i18n Multilingual Menu module installed all menu items can be given a language.

• A language selector appears at the bottom of ‘Edit menu item’:

Edit menu item

Multilingual Sites

• With interface + content + menu translation we have the basis for building multilingual sites in Drupal.

• I18n ‘Multilingual Blocks’ module can be used to switch blocks by language.

• I18n ‘Localization Client’ provides a nice way of translating strings that may not be provided in downloaded Drupal Translations.

Case study: Camart - Pure 360

• At Camart we developed an English – French – German – Spanish multilingual site for PurePromoter Ltd. – pure360.eu

• The client’s requirements were for additional translation workflow and extensibility towards future full automation integration with the ‘Big Word’ translation service via SOAP.

• We went with Drupal 6 for its integration of actions + central i18n into the core.

Pure 360 multilingual

• i18n

• Drupal 6

• ‘Big Word’ translation

• SOAP interface

• XML translation data

• Trados compatability

• Workflow automation

camart.co.uk