Currently, if there are several regional variations of a language say: zh-hans and zh-hant and a node is only available in zh-hans if a user tries to view the zh-hant version they'll be shown the zh-hans version rather than the original node. It seems that this should be an option.

Or, perhaps it makes more sense for the admin to be able specify the fallback order for each language. Is there a use case for this?

Comments

Freso’s picture

Freso commented

I think it would make more sense to rely on the language parameter sent by the browser. This contains a weighted list of languages - e.g., my Firefox is requesting "da,en-ie;q=0.8,en-gb;q=0.5,en;q=0.3", which would translate as "1st priority: Danish; 2nd (80%): Irish English; 3rd (50%): British English; 4th (30%): English" (it also ought to have "sco" between "en-ie" and "en-gb", but Firefox doesn't seem to like that. :(). So, grab the first one in the list that has a content translation available, and serve that. Of course, failing this, a user specified list of language fallbacks might be useful...

drewish’s picture

drewish commented

i don't really think that'd be feasible since the module since the module uses a single table for all users and it's built once, so the fallback is more of an admin specified ordering.

Freso’s picture

Freso commented

Alright. I haven't gotten around to poking at the module yet, so I'm really just pouring water out of me ears (or whatever you English speakers say). :)

tebb’s picture

tebb commented

Quote: "Or, perhaps it makes more sense for the admin to be able specify the fallback order for each language. Is there a use case for this?"

My vote goes for admin having control over the fallback sequence, though I can't immediately think how this selection would be administered if you have a site in many languages.

My reason is probably that I like having control.

Use case? Here are just some quick ideas.

1) Probably there are times when it would be a faux pas to fall back to the regional variation. For instance, I understand (might be wrong) that European and South American Spanish differ in formality.

2) On some sites the fallback might appear to be a mistake if the text is from regional variations. May be better to have a clearly different fallback language.

3) Site visitors reading in a regional variation might 'almost understand' which might be worse than not understanding at all. For example, if this is a difficult subject, it might be better to force them to get a translation or at least think more.

Not sure if that helps?

Dru-p