I have tried to put my experiences with multilingual sites in a mind map (see attached files). My whishes and expectations of a multilingual site are written in red.

I also attached the original file (vym.no-zip) in the format of "view your mind" (open source mind mapping tool) so one can extend the mind map.

When you look at the mind map you will see where the missunderstandings and problems come from. I have never seen such a complicated system with translations as Drupal is. You have the following places where you must translate:

  • content translation to translate content
  • taxonomy translation to translate taxonomy terms (but not always :( )
  • the forms itself (e.g. site settings), but that does not for content type definitions :( )
  • the "translate interface" function (especially for taxonomy terms that can not be translated by taxonomy translation
  • menus must be setup in a very special manner to be lanugage enabled

Which normal drupal user can handle this?

CommentFileSizeAuthor
Multilingual_Drupal_Site.vym_.no_.zip7.38 KBpepe roni
Multilingual_Drupal_Site.png142.73 KBpepe roni

Comments

pkej’s picture

pkej commented

Translation of menus:

I use different menus to collect menu items from different languages. Works swimmingly, as long as you configure the site settings. This is actually the easiest part of multilanguage stuff, as far as i am concerned.

Taxonomies:

PITA to work with. The only usable setting, for me, is Localize terms. Terms are common for all languages, but their name and description may be localized. unfortunately the "Translation table"-module, which is the only user friendly way to translate the taxonomy terms (not to mention least time consuming) seems to not work, and then suddenly it will work.

Nodes:

Have to be very careful when translating, if the interface language != original content's language you might have problems, see #361625: Translation nodes are lost if interface language == language translated to.

Translate interface:

The most reliable interface, but very disheartening to see thousands of untranslated strings ahead of you.

It would be nice to have your ideas for how it should work; I'm not working as a developer in i18n, but when you put it like you did, it is quite a few places to keep track of translation stuff.

jose reyero’s picture

jose reyero commented
Category: task » feature
Status: Active » Postponed

Very nice map, really.

Agreed the whole site translation is not easy.

However, I think this would be better (and get more attention) on the forum or on Drupal Groups. Or if you want to translate all these ideas into specific and actionable items, feel free to open new cases on the issue tracker.

jose reyero’s picture

jose reyero commented
Status: Postponed » Closed (won't fix)

closing feature request for 6.x