I am using a custom frontpage that is configured in the Site information settings (= node/66)
It is in English, the site default language

I have translated this page in French (= node/484)
Drupal knows that this page is the one that has to be displayed when the site language is set to French.

This worked perfectly indeed for weeks.

However, it doesn't work like that anymore since today. It is so strange that it is quite difficult to explain...

1) The site behave perfectly in English and French, swhithcing from one to another correctly as long as one does not hit the frontpage

2) When on the English frontpage
a- If I switch to French using the language switcher, both the frontpage and the primary/secondary links menus stay in English... However, other menu blocks seems OK (I have only one multilingual menu block, the other are not changing with the language)

3) When in this messy situation : current language is French, frontpage is English, primary/secondary link menus are English
3a- if I select the French version at the bottom of the frontpage, I get the correct page and the primary/secondary links menus go French - everything resume to a correct situation.

3b- if I select CERTAIN primary or secondary link items, I get the English page - consistent with the menu item, but inconsistent with the current language which is French
CERTAIN items = text only translated pages

3c- if I select OTHER primary or secondary link items, I get the correct French page and the primary/secondary links menus go French - everything resume to a correct situation. (same 3a)
OTHER items = translated pages or pages that include views that filter elements according to the current language

Additional notes:
- I updated a couple of modules that have no apparent relationships with this problem.
- The main think I did was updating Drupal from 6.5 to 6.6 (apart from many changes on contents)
- because of the strange primary/secondary links menus problems, I tried all themes - same phenomenon

Comments

jvieille’s picture

jvieille commented

More information:
- I tried to create a completely brand new front page - same behavior
- this can be observed online at http://www.controlchaingroup.com/
You are introduced in English: select French, and you'll see the menu change in the block "Information" at right (Default to French)- No change in the header section (primary/secondary)

- Press "Mission" in the Primary: a new page displays - in English
- Press "Expertise" : everything goes to French and stays OK until you go back to the frontpage ("accueil")
- When on the frontpage again (in English), swhitch the page itself to French (at the bottom): the correct page displays.

I am really puzzled, this appeared suddendly after D6.6 update

pepe roni’s picture

pepe roni commented

You have linked the node 404 (english) to french "mission" menu item instead of node 405 (french). Have a look at your menu definition!

jvieille’s picture

jvieille commented

No, it is OK
What you observe is that the primary / secondary menus do not switch from English to French when on the frontpage. It switches when selecting specific menu items of these menus, or any menu item in other menus.

Some menu items are bilinguale, some other are common to both languages.

Thanks for trying to help...

jvieille’s picture

jvieille commented

No way to get a multilinguale frontpage.
I am giving up.
I set the frontpage as language neutral and put the both language text one this unique page.
At least this works, but there is definitely a bug somewhere.

cornucopiacafe’s picture

cornucopiacafe commented

I am actively watching this issue as well, since my site is also multi-lingual.

pkej’s picture

pkej commented

I have similar porblems with the primary-secondary links. There are some serious bugs afoot.

jvieille’s picture

jvieille commented

Is somebody looking for solving this issue?
Anyone else having this problem?

pkej’s picture

pkej commented

For me the problem was I hadn't added the path prefix for the english pages, and I hadn't added the i18n_variables for 'menu_default_node_menu', 'menu_primary_links_source', 'menu_secondary_links_source', to my settings.php

After that it works beautifully.

jvieille’s picture

jvieille commented

Thanks for the hints, but
- how have you found this fix? Where is it documented?
- what are i18n_variables? I did not found any reference for them
- what are path prefix, how to add them?

I appologize, I am new in Drupal...

Thank you for your help

pkej’s picture

pkej commented

i18n_variables : http://drupal.org/node/313302, http://drupal.org/node/313272
path prefix: ?q=admin/settings/language/edit/en for english, then change the last part for each enabled language, you can also press edit in the list of enabled languages: ?q=admin/settings/language

I just stumbled upon these browsing the i18n queue.

jvieille’s picture

jvieille commented

Thank you very much
In fact, it would be great if this information was in the readme.txt file of the module instead of being in the main documentation that presents only trivial things but this one.

I did not had to do anything about path prefix. It is not needed for the default language (english in my case) and it was automatically added at some point for French (as "fr") by Drupal

jvieille’s picture

jvieille commented
Category: bug » support
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

I changed the issue settings accordingly

pkej’s picture

pkej commented

It is actually needed for english, since the language switcher didn't work properly until I put the prefix into the English path.

There are a lot of "gotchas" in Multilanguage setup. I've been doing it on and off since 4.7 and I am still getting burned...

pkej’s picture

pkej commented
Status: Closed (fixed) » Fixed

I think issues are supposed to be set to "fixedl" by us mortals, and there will be a bot who will auto close after a couple of weeks.

Anyway, while browsing issues I found this: http://drupal.org/node/70194 which is describing the primary/secondary menus for different languages, as well as an issue in the i18n project explaining the same in quite good detail: http://drupal.org/node/240627

pepe roni’s picture

pepe roni commented

@#8

and I hadn't added the i18n_variables for 'menu_default_node_menu', 'menu_primary_links_source', 'menu_secondary_links_source', to my settings.php

And someone else has forgotten, to integrate this into the GUI. Can't I expect, when I add menu translation, that this applies to primary and secondary links, too?

I found out, if there is an untranslated menu item in the primary links menu, language switching does not switch the menu.

I am currently fed up to the back teeth with i18n, dig into this and dig into that, solve this problem and solve that problem, set this variable here and set that variable there and so on. Where is the GUI for that?

pkej’s picture

pkej commented

#15
Agree, agree, agree. But, it is great work, apart from the problems I've had, the i18n modules (and contributed modules) are working better and better. But, your last point where is the gui for translating taxonomy, menus, etc?

I'd just like to have a menu admin/build/translate/overview with the existing local tasks plus "menu, taxonomy, blocks" etc, based on what you have enabled. And at least for each of those a page where you can have a list of existing menus, drag and drop for language selection and plain text fields side by side for entering translations of existing menus/taxonomy. Instead of having to change the interface to write in the info for each language.

That said, Drupal is much better at language stuff than other systems I've tried and many older systems. Of course that says more about those others than Drupal.

sebos69’s picture

sebos69 commented

Hi!

I faced similar problems about the homepage of our multilingual site. To solve the problem (we use the URL path module), we set the homepage address "home" and both homepages (in french and english) paths to "home". After saving the second homepage URL path, Drupal complains about duplicate entries, but this way, everything seems to work....

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for two weeks with no activity.

najibx’s picture

najibx commented
Status: Closed (fixed) » Active

Got to work to certain extend.

My problem is the DEFAULT primary menu does not shows up on FRONTPAGE, admin pages, and page not found. If switch to other language, other language primary menu shows up ok.

In other pages, switch back and fort no problem.

Problem only at frontpage.

jose reyero’s picture

jose reyero commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

@najib,
Sounds like a different issue, please add a new issue, don't reopen old (different) ones.