By Anonymous (not verified) on

Hi, I'm new to Drupal and I'm pulling my hair out trying to make my web site multilingual (English/Japanese). I'm using the il8n module. I've searched through the forums and documentation but most of what I find are PHP code hacks. I'm sure there is a simpler and more 'correct' way.

My first problem is that my front page does not change when the user uses the language picker to change languages.

I created a home page and it's translation. The home page's language is set to English and the translation page's language us set to Japanese.

When I chose the 'Translate' option for that page I can see both pages properly listed:

Language Title Status Operations
English (source) Welcome to CacheKuni.com Published edit
Japanese Welcome to CacheKuni.com Published edit

Select translations for Welcome to CacheKuni.com
Japanese: Welcome to CacheKuni.com [nid:5]

My front page is:

http://www.cachekuni.com/drupal/home

When a user clicks on the language switcher for Japanese he gets sent to:

http://www.cachekuni.com/drupal/ja

However that displays the English version not the Japanese version.

What am I missing?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

brucepearson’s picture

brucepearson commented

When I view your site I get Japanese when navigating to http://www.cachekuni.com/drupal/ja

Welcome to CacheKuni.com
こんにちは！いっぱい買ってください!!

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

It took me a few hours but I finally found a solution.

Make all the translated pages have the same URL alias (e.g. home).

Then under site configuration|site information change the default front page to be 'home'

http://drupal.org/node/249694#comment-1451240

Als’s picture

Als
Location Milano, Italia
commented

"Make all the translated pages have the same URL alias (e.g. home).
Then under site configuration|site information change the default front page to be 'home'
http://drupal.org/node/249694#comment-1451240"

Confirm this configuration works for me in D6.17 + I18n.
Anyone stumbling here trying to make the home page display the right translation via the language switcher, try this first-level solution.

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

Well ... I had it solved but it didn't last for long :(

I went and added another page and primary menu item, FAQ, to my site and now when I switch to Japanese my links for Home, About Us, and FAQ disappear.

Translation Table | Menu is showing all the menu items and there translations but they aren't appearing.

Why does adding another page of content destroy my menus? This happens every time ...

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

Ok, fixed it. I had to go into Translation Table | Menu and edit the newly added menu item (FAQ).

For some reason Translation table did not have the right path. It had node/7 which is correct but I needed to put the alias instead, content/FAQ

So two very related questions:

1- Why did node/7 not work with translation tables? What I do wrong? Should I have done something different when creating the content?

2- Even if I did create the new FAQ content page incorrectly, it shouldn't have broken the other menu links. Is this a bug in Translation Table or the il8n module perhaps?

mikehajj’s picture

mikehajj commented

hello,
well i did what you guys suggested.
both my homepages are pointing to /content/who-we-are
as the homepage and the site information has been updated accordingly.

it doesn't translate.
the url is : http://www.lf-mc.de

main language is english. on the hompeage, click on deutsh, the menu translates and everything but the content of the node ( who we are ) remains in english.

i have wasted like 2 hours trying to figure out what is missing ... so far no clue.

i am using D7 by the way.

lsdoc77’s picture

lsdoc77 commented

I am having the same problem..
It seems like some kind of bug to me .
I try to put the aliased name in the site configuration page but when I save it , it changes to the unaliased (eg node/xxx).
One way around is to create a new node with neutral language and php field and manually check for the language and then decide which node to show up.But I guess this is a dirty solution..
Any slicker solution would be welcomed..

lsdoc77’s picture

lsdoc77 commented

Create a new page with php field and add thsi page as the front page of the website..
Then enter this code in the body of the node..

<?php
global $language;
switch ($language->language){
case "el" : $nid = 21;break; // The greek version of the front page
case "en" : $nid = 22;break;  //The english version of the front page
}
$node = node_view(node_load($nid));
print render($node); //You can also have $node['body'] if you don't want the title..
?>
kristen pol’s picture

kristen pol
she/her
Primary language English
Location Santa Cruz, CA, USA
commented

In case anyone finds this and needs to get this working, you can use the Internationalization (i18n) package's Variable translation (D7) / Multilingual variables (D6) module. More info at >HowTo: Different home page (default front page) for each language.

Kristen

-Kristen
Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristenpol
Drupal 7 Multilingual Sites: http://kristen.org/book

bobr37’s picture

bobr37 commented

My real problem is home page, which is set up according to http://drupal.org/node/1216132 and http://http://bengoodyear.com/article/drupal-7-cracking-the-multilingual...

I have following modules installed:
- i18n ( Internationalization );
- Variable;
- Entity;
- Title ( node title translation );
- Views translation;
- Entity Translation;
- Transliteration;

Home Page remains in default english no matter what language i choose.

I do have Vars enabled for Default home page, Pages or PHP code, Source for the Main links, Source for the Secondary links.

i suspect that main problem is that language switch does not effect change of class of body tag = "front logged-in no-sidebars page-node page-node- page-node-1 node-type-page i18n-en admin-menu",

- no matter what language is in address bar ( /en... or /de... or /fr... ) - in source code i can see that lang="en" remains lang="en" and body class also remains i18n-en ( no matter if it's home or any other page ). It is obvious that Language Switch and html.tpl.php are disconnected. I've tried a few different themes (Zen, Sky and so on) and that also makes no difference.

Please advise. Any insight is greatly appreciated.
best,
Max

bobr37’s picture

bobr37 commented

Hello Kristen,
never mind my last post/comment ))
I"ve found your "Setting up Entity translation" post http://drupal.org/node/1280800
and now it all works.
And thank you very much for your work, you know how confusing and spread out documentation is.
also good luck with your book, it will be a hit.
best regards,
Max

jai bala’s picture

jai bala commented

i make my web site multilingual (English/russian). I'm using the il8n module.My first problem is that my front page does not change when the block uses the language . http://www.treatmenttraveller.com/ this is english site. and http://www.treatmenttraveller.com/ru is russian site.

themedspa’s picture

themedspa commented

Hello, please tell me anybody how to implement translator to my website. This is my website https://www.themedspa.us