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By cloneofsnake on
I had followed guides on here to translate contents on a D5 install, and found out that it was impossible to have 1 node with multiple languages - hence sharing the comments.
I asked on here, and someone had told me to move on to D6, as the i18n on D6 will allow this feature! Or else I would have to use the Language Sections module.
I opt to switch to D6, but I still don't see the new i18n giving me that option! (In content type, under workflow settngs > Multilingual Support, there's "Disabled", "Enabled" and "Enabled with Translations". These options give me the same result when translation a node - it creates a new node!! (So en/node/1 is in english, and ja/node/2 is the same content translated into Japanese.)
HOWEVER, I do realize that Views2 on Drupal6 is awesome and I can probably do use it to create some sort of workaround, like may be build a page to show the content part of ja/node/2, but all comments are related from the en/node/1 ... so whatever languages you're viewing, all the comments will be added to the English version so they're all in one place.
I'm just thinking though, is that the right thing to do? Should multilingual work this way? With sets of different languages as different nodes, their relationships keep tracked of by the i18n in the database... OR should we have ONE node, multi languages inside?
Thoughts?
Comments
Yes, to get multiple
Yes, to get multiple languages on one node you'll need to use the 'sections' module.
I don't know how views would be able to help you with that.
> is that the right thing to do? Should multilingual work this way? With sets of different languages
> as different nodes, their relationships keep tracked of by the i18n in the database... OR should
> we have ONE node, multi languages inside?
Personally I think I'd prefer it if there was just one node, and the language translations were kept in the same row of the database as the original language. However, I'll concede that there are probably pros and cons with both methods, especially from a scripting/development perspective.
I also think that multi-language was implemented into a core which hadn't made any consideration for multiple languages, and it had to be added so that existing sites weren't broken. So I doubt that there was a whole lot of choice or room for manoeuvre in how support for language was eventually added.
For instance, it is absurd that English phrases are actually hard coded into the core. If multi-language had been considered from the start, I doubt they would have done that; English would be in .po files like every other language, and the core would contain references to the phrases, not the actual phrases themselves.
Also, I gather that the language development got caught by the D6 code-freeze; they didn't have time to implement all that they wanted to. I think this is one of the reasons why the language implementation isn't quite up to the standard of other areas of drupal, and that it will improve for D7 and D8.
One of my concern for not
One of my concern for not using the "Language Section" module was upgrades. If Drupal 7 finally fixes the multilingual problems, how will I upgrade my nodes which have multiple language sections? A process will need to parse the content field and put the different language sections into the D7 built-in way of handling multi language. I'm afraid there will be no direct path for that kind of upgrade!
Is this a valid concern?
> If Drupal 7 finally fixes
> If Drupal 7 finally fixes the multilingual problems, how will I upgrade my nodes
> which have multiple language sections?
Firstly, don't assume your site will upgrade to D7 at all.
It is more likely that it won't, than will.
Core will upgrade, but your modules will probably prevent you.
Unless you are good at databases and can fix your broken data.
Secondly, I seriously doubt that the language team thinks that using separate urls is 'broken'.
It was a choice of approach, and once that choice was made, the two methods are incompatible.
You're assuming too much. I would post in the D7 project pages under language, or get yourself
onto the drupal IRC channel, and actually ask a language developer what kind of roadmap they
have. But I'm fairly sure the system will continue to use a node for each language; that seems
to be more consistent with 'the drupal way'.