i18n

Remove node Language field from display

The Internationalization module exposes a new field on the node display, the node language, that was already there but never displayed.

In order to remove it from showing up on the node view, you need to edit your content type's Display settings. Note: The Field UI core module must be enabled to edit these Display settings.

1. Go to Administration > Structure > Content types.
2. Click on the specific content type's Manage display tab.
3. Set the Language field's display settings to Hidden and click 'Save'. If the Language field does not appear in the listing on the Manage Display page of your content type, try temporarily adding and subsequently removing a new custom display.

Option fields or taxonomy reference fields showing up untranslated

1. Go to Administration > Structure > Content types.
2. Click on the specific content type's Manage display tab.
3. Set format to Default translated, Link (localized), or Plain text (localized) depending on the field type.

When using node references, if the Multilingual select module is enabled (from the Internationalization package), you'll see only a list of nodes in the current language when selecting node references. To change this and get nodes for all languages to show up when selecting node references, you can exclude node edit paths from the language selection as follows:

• Go to Administration > Configuration > Regional and Language > Multilingual settings > Selection.
• On Enable for specific pages, select 'All pages except those listed'.
• Add the paths:
  
    node/add
  node/*/edit
• Save

Node listing as the homepage

When creating a multilingual Drupal site, if your site front page is a node listing (which is the default in Drupal), you can enable the Multilingual select module, included in the contributed Internationalization (i18n) package of modules, and the content for each language will be selected depending on your settings for 'Language selection' (Administration > Configuration > Regional and language > Multilingual settings > Selection ) so you won't need to do anything else in this case.

Different node or path per language as the homepage

When using a single node as the front page, or when using a different path per language for the front page, the page won't switch automatically depending on the language detection. You need to use the Variable translation module (part of the Internationalization package) to specify a default front page path per language.

• In Configuration > Regional and languages: Multilingual settings > Variables, enable 'Default front page' as a multilingual variable.
• Go to Configuration > System > Site information > Front page.

Some external links and articles about Drupal 7 and i18n:

• Drupal 7 Multilingual: What's new in i18n
• Internationalization for Drupal 7, overview of Beta1
• Drupal 7's new multilingual systems compilation
• Drupal 7 i18n articles compilation

To configure Pathauto to have language-specific path aliases, do the following:

1. admin/build/modules: enable Locale and Content Translation modules
2. admin/build/block: enable the language switcher block (this is required since your path aliases will only show in the currently active language, the rest will show as unaliased)
3. admin/settings/language/add: add a couple of new languages - say French and Spanish
4. admin/settings/language/configure: change the 'Language negotiation' setting to 'Path prefix with language fallback'
5. admin/content/types: edit the content types that require translation and set the 'Multilingual support' setting to 'Enabled, with translation' - the setting is in the 'Workflow settings' fieldset
6. admin/build/path/pathauto: add new, language-specific patterns for the node types, say article/[title-raw] for French and artículo/[title-raw] for Spanish
7. node/add/story: create a new item of content, and set the language to English (or whatever your default language is)
8. node/NID/translate: click the Translate tab and then click the 'add translation' link for each language that you wish to have a translation

Here are some multilingual advanced techniques which can be used for specific use cases. Please make sure to read the main sections of the "Multilingual Guide" handbook before trying these user-created snippets and tutorials.

For your information, complementary snippets are available at HowTos, tutorials and links if you are building your website with the contributed Internationalization (i18n) module in Drupal 7.

External references

Installing Drupal 6 in Another Language by Addison Berry (Lullabot)

One of Drupal 6's nice new features allows you to install Drupal using a language other than English. This video will show you how to get a translation, extract it and run the installer with the new language.

Watch the video (18 minutes, 28.7 MB in mp4 format)

Installing Drupal in French by Mickael, birdmanx35 (Lullabot)

Created for a GHOP task, this screencast details Drupal 6's new language support options, including installation and translation. This video actually has its own page in the handbook: http://drupal.org/node/212321