1. I – Introduction >
About Wunderkraut
Wunderkraut is...
 Drupal Service Provider,
Munich, Germany
 Drupal-Expertise,
Consulting, Training,
Implementation
 Customers in Europe and
USA
 Multiple years of doing
Drupal
 → wunderkraut.com
Presenting today:
Reinhard Gloggengiesser
Florian Lorétan

2. I – Introduction >
Babel and
Beyond:
Building
multilingual
websites
with Drupal

3. I – Introduction >
• Principles of
multilingual sites
• Questions to ask
yourself
• The most important
Agenda modules
• Language detection
and selection
• Integration with
external tools and
services
• Outlook for Drupal 8

4. I – Introduction >
What is a multilingual site?
A site in a different language
than english?
A site with its interface in
multiple languages?
A site with content in multiple
languages?
A site with different content
for each language or
translated content?
A mixture of all of the above?

5. I – Introduction >
A foreign language site
 Just one language for site
visitors
 Interface, messages etc.
need to be translated

6. I – Introduction >
Interface in different languages
 Content stays mostly the
same
 Navigation, info-blocks,
important buttons are
translated
 Suitable for cases where
you want to offer at least
*some* internationalization.

7. I – Introduction >
Different content in multiple languages
 Content is different
depending on the selected
language
 Switching between
languages changes the
interface as well
 Suitable for cases where
you offer highly individual
content to different
audiences.

8. I – Introduction >
Translated content in multiple languages
 Content is the same no
matter what is the selected
language
 Switching between
languages changes the
interface as well
 Suitable for cases where
you have ample resources
to translate all your
content.

9. I – Introduction >
Question to ask yourself
 What resources do you
have for doing translations?
 Shall untranslated content
be visible?
 Do languages correlate to
regions?
 Who will translate?
 What will be the default
language of the site?
 How will language affect
the design of the site?

10. II – Techniques >
The most important modules
Drupal Core
Locale
Content translation
Contributed
I18n (Internationalization)
Entity translation
Localization update
Translation overview
Localization client

11. II – Techniques >
Translating interface texts
Locale module
Manually import, edit and
export interface translations
Search all translatable
strings
Filter by language and
status
Drupal 6 and 7

12. II – Techniques >
Translating interface texts
Localization update
Download and update
current translations of Drupal
core and contributed
modules
From localize.drupal.org
Select update strategy
http://drupal.org/project/l10
n_update
Drupal 6 and 7

13. II – Techniques >
Translating interface texts
Localization client
Change and save
translations for interface
strings right from the page
No need to enter admin
interface
http://drupal.org/project/l10
n_client
Drupal 6 and 7

14. II – Techniques >
Translating content

15. II – Techniques >
Translating content
Settings per content type
Different methods for different content types are possible.

16. II – Techniques >
Translating content
Node translation
Content translation module
(Drupal core)
New node for each
translation
Nodes are mapped
together

17. II – Techniques >
Translating content
Field level translation
Entity translation module
(drupal.org/project/entity_tran
slation)
Translation of fields instead $node->field_body['en'][0]['value']
of nodes
Fields are translatable in
core

18. II – Techniques >
Field level translation
Works for:
Nodes
Taxonomy terms
Users
Comments
...

19. II – Techniques >
Field level translation
Translatability:
Can be translated: Can‘t be translated:
All fields Author
Additional per-translation Promoted
metadata Creation and modification
date
Title...

20. II – Techniques >
Field level translation
Title module:
$node->title
$term->name
$term->description $node->field_title
$term->field_name
$term->field_description

21. II – Techniques >
Field level translation
Language fallback

22. II – Techniques >
Language detection
 By URL
 example.com/de, /en, /fr ...
 example.de, example.com,
example.fr
 de.example.com,
fr.example.com
 From session
 User preference
 Browser setting
Freely sortable!

23. III – Using external tools >
Translations from drupal.org
localize.drupal.org
Translations for Drupal
core, modules, and themes
Everyone can participate!
Source for translations via
http://drupal.org/project/l10n_
update
Drupal 5, 6 and 7

24. III – Using external tools >
Translation Management
Drupal.org/project/translation
_management
Provides integration with
external translation
memories
Icanlocalize.com
Provides dashboard for
translations
Drupal 6 and 7

25. III – Using external tools >
Translation Management Tool
drupal.org/project/tmgmt
Different module!
Pluggable architecture for
integrating various backends
 Google translate (machine)
 Bing translator (machine)
 Nativy (human)
 MyGengo (human)
 Supertext (human)
 One hour translation (human)
Drupal 7 only

26. III – Outlook >
The future of multilanguage in Drupal
Multilanguage in Drupal 7:
 Lots of different modules
 Overlapping functionality
Multilanguage in Drupal 8
 Interface and content
translation built into core
 Cleanup of functionality