Drupal 7 multilingual investigation

List of modules and step-by-step configurations to get a multi-lingual setup working with Content Translation (locale) module. For installation with Entity Translation see the other post (in Spanish).

First I installed the Locale module.

This is the base of what you need to define the languages for your site, and define how/when to choose a language to display to the end user. More details can be found on Gabor’s first installment on his blog.

After reading Gabor’s write-up, I realized that I’ll be needing quite a few more modules to get a fully multi-lingual site working. So I decided to start making a list of multilingual modules and what they are needed for:

Localization update (l10n_update) - Figures out which modules your site uses, and keeps the translations up to date with localize.drupal.org.

Localization client (l10n_client) - A module that lets you create interface translations on the fly, and contribute them back to localize.drupal.org

Content translation (locale) - Core Drupal module for translating content.

Internationalization (i18n) - This is a collection of modules to extend Drupal core multilingual capabilities and be able to build real life multilingual sites. Some features:

• Taxonomy translation, both per language terms and translatable terms.
• Multilingual variables & Multilingual blocks to control visibility per language and translate title and content
• Language selection when you switch the site language you’ll see only the content for that language.

Variable - the i18n module for Drupal 7 depends on the variable module.

After having a basic list of modules, I found it helpful to write down the steps needed to setup a real multi-lingual site in Drupal 7:

Step 1: Setup languages.

In order to have an international site, you must first determine the languages you want to support, and the rules for language mitigation (eg session, path-prefix / domain name, user setting, etc). All of this can be done with Drupal’s core Locale module.

Step 2: Update Drupal core and contrib modules.

Before you start translating a bunch of strings, it would be beneficial to have the latest-greatest version of Drupal modules, so that your time is not wasted translating potentially outdated strings.

Step 3: Translate the interface.

Before you start translating the content on the site, you’ll definitely get a lot farther if you import existing translations that others have made based on strings of text provided in the Drupal interface. Install the Localization update module.

Once installed, a new tab is added to admin/config/regional/language called Translation Updates where you can administer these updates. You need to specify the location to store downloaded files, typically sites/all/translations.

Additionally, Home » Administration » Configuration » Regional and language » Translate interface will now have a tab titled Update which lets you review your localization update status and perform outstanding updates. Visit the update page, and update all the strings, to download the most recent translations from localize.drupal.org.

Step 4: Translate content.

This is probably the most complex step, and it requires a veritable concert of contributed modules to get the job done. The Internationalization (i18n) module will be the basis for content translation workflows on the site.

The i18n project page lists a plethora of other translation modules available that can be installed & configure according to the site’s needs.

Enable multi-lingual support on various content types.

Step 5: Update existing content.

All existing content on the site will have their language setting set to “Language Neutral”. Even if you’ve specifically disallowed this setting in the administrative panels. You must update the language for all content from Language Neutral to the default language, in our case, “English”. This ensure that the Translate tab appears for translators on the node’s page.

Step 6: Translate Contact form.

Install tcontact module to translate the different categories (to potentially send inquiries to different people). To enable translation of the “Additional Information” text (Contact Form Settings), add the following line to your site’s settings.php file (requires Internationalization):

$conf['i18n_variables'][] = 'contact_form_information';

Step 7: Translate Blocks

Some blocks need to be translated, others simply will be out of context on foreign language translations. Use the i18n_block (depends on i18n, i18n_string, and variable api modules) to add an extra ‘Language’ tab under visibility settings on all blocks.