Drupal world dominationTranslating interface and content in Drupal

Gábor Hojtsy, Acquia Inc.December 12 2008, Do It With Drupal, New Orleans

http://acquia.com/ • http://doitwithdrupal.com/

About the presenter

Web developer since 1999, building open communities and contributing to open source projects ever sinceWorks with and contributes to Drupal since 2003Drupal 6 branch maintainerCode gardener at Acquiahttp://acquia.com/

Will demo with Acquia Drupal

Curated distribution of Drupal 6 Connects to the Acquia NetworkNot a fork in any way of the included software, all GPLYou can do everything shown with Drupal 6 and the modules mentioned in the session

About you

Built non-Drupal multilanguage site?Built Drupal based site?Built Drupal based multilanguage site?

“Decision makers”?“Users”?“Developers”?

Drupal 6 language subsystem

Two worlds, one family

Text from inside module and theme code is translated for you–These can be pre-translated by international teams–Distributed and shared freely on drupal.org

All custom content you generate is your job to translate–Content on the website, taxonomy, menus–Text in views, content type !elds, and so on...

Generally different ways to approach the two

And there is a lot more to do

Relating translations (complete copies, subsites)Different permissions, lifecyclesSetting up work#owsIntegrating with external toolsJust selecting the language to use is complex

Drupal 6 language subsystem

The installer

Install in your language

After pro!le is selected, Drupal looks for available translationsOffers translations to useLanguage packages can be downloaded and extracted into Drupal root for useFiles in /pro!les/pro!lename/translations/ are consideredFiles are imported in a batch (progress bar)

Start screen of the default pro!le

Some languages extracted to Drupal

On the installer interface.In the !le system.

Translated (almost)!

Translated (almost)!

Translated (almost)!

Translated (almost)!

Translated (almost)!

Imports translations automatically

The runtime knows about languages

Properties of languages known

The default language for the websiteEnglish and native language namesWriting direction support (LTR or RTL)De!ned ordering (weights)Path pre!x or (sub)domain associatedAdminister » Site con!guration » Languages

Adding new languages

Extract interface translations to Drupal rootAdd language from prede!ned list if possible

Automated translation import

Modules and themes also have ./translations subdirectoriesWhen you add a language, all enabled modules and themes get translations importedWhen you enable a module or theme, translations imported in all languagesAdminister » Site building » Translate interface

The language to use to display the page

Can be set to be always the site defaultOr pick the !rst identi!ed from this list:–IRI (domain name, path pre!x)–User preferences–Browser language preference settings–Fallback on site default

Which of these is used exactly is con!gurable at Administer » Site con!guration » Languages » Con!gure

Example language setups

Using path pre!xes–German language set up with /deutsch path pre!x–Hungarian language set up with /magyar path pre!x

Using subdomains–German language on de.example.com–Hungarian on hu.example.com

Or even use high level domains–German on beispiel.de–Hungarian on példa.hu

Server setup for multiple domains

Make sure that all domains point to the same virtual host in your webserver con!gurationDrupal should automatically pick up the domain from the requestIf using subdomains, make sure that cookies are set on *.example.com, not per subdomainIf using standalone domains, you will not be signed on on multiple domains at once just by logging in at one of them

Language is known, now what?

Drupal selects the language, but it is up to the rest of the modules used to act accordinglyThe interface is displayed in that languageWebsite settings, views, etc. might need more tweaking to behave as you wishGetting “custom content” such as custom menu items, taxonomy terms and site settings to translate requires contributed modules

Right-to-left (sub)theme support

Remember admin/settings/language to revert.

Right-to-left (sub)theme support

Drupal itself includes RTL support for all its functionalityAll CSS !le additions are intercepted and RTL cascade !les are searched for (eg. style-rtl.css for style.css !les)All core themes have RTL supportEasy to write RTL supporting themes, even with color module

Language dependent path aliases

Language dependent e-mails

Users have their preferred language set upThose registering on a translated page get that as preferred language by defaultThis language is used to send e-mails, such as welcome or new password request e-mailDrupal 6 can send e-mails in multiple languages in one request

Language comes to content

Associate language to content

As soon as locale module is enabled, content types can be language enabledShows a language selection dropdown for posts when editingAllows for Language neutral posts. Applicable when content is not attached to any languageDoes not mean content translation in itselfUse case: blogs, where author posts in different languages, but these are distinct posts on one site

Associate language to contentSetting up the Page content type

Creating new Page content

Consequences

Post will have URL with language speci!c part included (domain, path pre!x), if set upThe associated language can be used to create views, export in feeds, etc.Even if you only have a single language site, if translation ever becomes a requirement, better to have posts in the system already marked

Translate content

The content translation module

Once the Content translation (core) module is enabled, a new language option is available

Translation functionality is exposed

Title and body pre!lled for translation

Translation links on each post.

Add Hungarian translation for Hebrew post.

Each translation is a different node

Great, so that you can have different work#ows for these nodes (eg. publish only if all translations are done)These can have different authors, updated times, permissions, comments in the given language, can show up in different feeds, and so onSets of nodes belonging to the same set are called a translation setVoting, #agging, etc. is supported on the set level as well in contributed modules

Basic work#ow support in core

The source node of the translation set can be set to be changed signi!cantly, marking translations outdatedThe translations can then be updated to re#ect the change

On the source post:

Basic work#ow support in core

On a translation. Uncheck if not true anymore.

So far so long for Drupal 6 core itself

Review of the runtime architecture

Drupal 6 cannot translate

Site settingsTaxonomy (vocabularies, terms)User de!ned menus (menus, items)Aggregator categoriesPro!le !eld titles and categoriesContent type propertiesBlocksNode lists!

So look for contributed modules to add on

Interface translation tweaks

String overrides

http://drupal.org/project/stringoverridesReplace text available for interface translationLess resource intensive then locale moduleOverride in any language on Drupal 6Will only override the concrete strings speci!ed

String overrides

Localization client

http://drupal.org/project/l10n_clientDrupal 6 allows collecting strings used on the pageTool built on top of that to translate strings while you walk around pagesCan share translations to a central Localization server while you submit themWorks on non-English pages, if people have permission to do it

Localization client

Localization server

http://drupal.org/project/l10n_serverMaking interface translation for language groups a lot easierThe intent is to move from CVS and drupal.org project management to a web applicationTranslation sharing, support for packagingCan receive translations from Localization clientUses http://drupal.org/project/potx (Translation template extractor)

Web service based content translation

Google translate

http://drupal.org/project/gtransGoogle operates an online translation serviceThis module just passes text through that service via their normal web interfaceThe output is wrapped, so users don’t see it going through GoogleSome caveats–Not legal, mentioned to highlight the concept–Does not work for logged-in users–Not well supported, no Drupal 6 version

Translatable comments

http://drupal.org/project/translatablecommentsUses Google AJAX Translation API (legal)Completely JavaScript basedUses a !xed set of languages

Original comment:

Translated to French:

Machine translation is hard (and funny)

Machine translation is hard (and funny)

Extended content translation work#ow

support

Support computer aided humans

Computer Aided Translation (CAT) tools take HTML, Word, etc. documents and allow translation of thoseThey work with a translation memory which pre-translates the textHumans !x the translations, and feed back the new knowledge to the memory (automatically)The translation gets to the originator in HTML, Word document, etc. format

XLIFF Tools module example

http://drupal.org/project/xliffXML Localisation Interchange File Format is a format maintained by OASISSeparates content and formatting in a standard way

AWTW module

http://drupal.org/project/awtwAWTW is Automated Web Translation Work#owWorks very similar to XLIFF Tools, but easier to useExports to a custom XML format, which includes source node identi!erAllows you to import translations easily, since it can !nd the original node based on the identi!erNot yet ported to Drupal 6

Translation overview

http://drupal.org/project/translation_overviewWorks with the core translation systemModi!es existing Translate tab on nodes

Translation overview screen

Team work#ow with permissions

http://drupal.org/project/work#owActions and work#ow modules allow you to set up work#ows for translation with states and transitionsWork#ow access supports node level access controlFor example:–Only allow editing of a post until it is “sent for translation”–Send out email to translators then–Only allow translators to edit until set “for review”–Automatically publish when “reviewed”

What about content views?

Views

http://drupal.org/project/viewsViews supports languages, translation sets and translation status valuesEasily !lter on language or translation set for nodesSort views by languageSet up relations based on translation setsLanguage is only available if translation module enabled - see #343178 for more information

Views

Views

Translate more!

Internationalization (i18n) module

Supports multilingual variablesLanguage based listing with extended options for core content listing

Settings (variables) translation setupIn your site’s settings.php

Site settings (variables) translationOn your site’s user interface.

And submodules do a lot more

i18nstrings module

Base (API) module for most custom translation toolsImplements strings translation API via the Drupal 6 core provided textgroups systemObject based translation system which almost made it to Drupal 6Other modules like i18nblocks, i18nmenu and i18ntaxonomy use it

i18nblocks.module example

i18nblocks.module example

Share/sync data between translations

i18nsync, i18npoll modules

Helps you sync values between content translationsTaxonomy terms, CCK !elds are not shared among nodes in the same translation seti18nsync can sync taxonomy terms and CCK !eld values between set membersi18npoll module will help you aggregate poll results for translations

Other contributed modules

The direction is to be able to attach behaviors to both individual nodes and translation setsFlag module for example supports #agging by translation set or by individual nodeCoordinated work going on at the i18n group http://groups.drupal.org/node/15064

Look at your own requirements

Look at your own requirements

People meet lots of different requirementsYou need to build your own solution according to that and adapt what is there to evolving needsThere are a lot more multilingual options beyond what I could cover in this session, so keep exploringhttp://drupal.org/project/Modules/category/97

Questions?

ThanksGábor Hojtsy

gabor@acquia.comAcquia Inc., http://acquia.com/