Tag: multilingual

Language Specific CSS Selectors

The site that I am working on is bilingual, specifically in english and in spanish. This presents complications for any site of course, so this is a good trick to have in your arsenal. This is especially good for Drupal but will work on any site.

media=”screen”

:lang(es) #menu-4184-1

{
position:relative;
width: 122px;
}
This will allow the particular selector to be used only when the language is set to spanish. Please note that many other languages can be used by this by replacing the two letter language code with the one that you need. EI – de for german.

Drupal Multilingual Tips – Browser Settings, Session Params and Account Settings

I have a front/login page that is available to anonymous users. I need to be able to deliver the page bilingually but I rely primarily on the Drupal account settings and language switcher to determine whether the site is presented in English or Spanish. So how do I present in Spanish to anonymous users when appropriate? Drupal also allows you to use the user’s browser settings as well to determine what language to display. And it also allows you to change the order of factors to determine what language to present in. After some testing and a lot of thought about the UX, I have settled on,

  • Browser settings – Helps for Anonymous
  • Session parameter – If a Spanish defined account want to use the language switcher to get English instead for that session
  • Account settings – The catch-all
  • Default site language

In my specific case, this will provide the most flexibility for my audience.

IFrame stuff – what you can’t do

well, i have just about gven up on this. I have googled, asked those smarter than i am. that’s pretty much anybody, though. and i believe that what I am trying to do is not going to work and  is probably not possible anyway.

I have been trying to insert some code into an iframe so that I can load a widget and translate any page that appears in that Iframe. But, for what are really obvious reasons involving security, this can’t be done. if you know how to do it; make me eat some crow. please. crow is good. makes you learn humility. and it makes you learn.and i heard that it can make you less dumb.

so, if i haven’t gotten anywhere tomorrow when i get up on this, it is on to intercepting theme elements to allow you to add your own styling elements to your site. fun stuff. pretty stuff. css.

Iframe & Translation Update

I have the module installed, the content type created and I have links that are made from this type. And the site opens in the iframe but the translator settings are not following the iframe, which is what I need. I need to be able to allow my users an easy way to translate external content. I’ll figure it out. But that’s about all I am going to be doing today.

External Links in an I-Frame

I have a bunch of external links that I need to be displayed in a way that they still are a part of the site. This way, the external sites can still be translated from the translation widget that I have installed on the site. I have downloaded this module – External Iframes – and will be testing it out to see how it goes.

I went with a module based solution because I don’t want to write the code myself for doing I frames. I don’t want to have to maintain that.

 

X modulesX multilingualX bilingualX englishX spanishX microsoft translatorX iframeX external content translation

Multilingual Update

I have been working with the Multilingual stuff all day and I think I have it at a point where I’m OK with it. I simply needed to play around with the interface myself for a bit and get used to it. But I believe that I can say that it is the quirkiest part of Drupal that I have had to work with. But once I got a steady rhythm going I was able to knock out things pretty easily.

I also  enabled the session option for Multilingual and set its priority to first. That way, I can use Panels to add the Language Switcher Dropdown to the main page. So, with the language specified on the account settings and the dropdown enabled, spanish speakers will get spanish first with the option to change the language from the main page. English speakers get the same options.

Multilingual Update

I have decided that I want to show all content, regardless of language. But, I want to show the user interfaces in the language that has been chosen in the user’s profile. Under

  • Configure, Languages – I turned on Spanish
  • Detection and Selection – chose User for the method
  • Language Switcher – All content. No language conditions apply.
  • Configure, Translate Interface, Translate – search for strings that haven’t been translated in the UI by the defaults and translate them manually. Use http://www.babelfish.com
  • create a user account with spanish as the default, open that account on a different browser or different machine to test.
  • find the strings you need to translate from the spanish user’s interface, translate them on the admin side, save and test back on the spanish side.

Multilingual Considerations

I have made a decision about what is going to be translated on my site. Since the site mainly warehouses news information from outside sources via RSS and Mailhandler and there is a tremendous amount of content all the time, I can’t hope to translate that.

What I can offer is:

  • Spanish support in the interface
  • English or Spanish as a language default in the People settings for individuals
  • Forums, Blogs, and other standard (core) Content Types that can be available in both languages depending on the author.

So I believe that I am going to go with the Content Translation path. I wanted to do Entity Translation before but I believe that it is just going to be too much to offer everything in both languages. I accumulate over 100 nodes every day from outside sources and there is no inexpensive way to translate all that. It could be done, but I don’t have the time to translate all that (even if my spanish was better than it is) and I can’t afford the services that can do it.

I want to emphasize that though. Drupal can have complete content synchronization between all nodes if that is what you want to pay for. but that is beyond my budget at this time.

But the point of all this is to be realistic about what it is that you can provide. and what you need to provide. Do a little storyboarding and floow the path of a non-english speaker.

Language Switcher

I’m installing this in addition to the multilingual basics that you can find on this blog under the multilingual category.

Language Switcher 7.x-1.0-beta2 Determines which content to show depending on the current page language and the default language of the site

Requires: Locale (enabled)
Language Switcher Dropdown 7.x-1.5 Provides a dropdown select to switch between available languages.

Requires: Locale (enabled)

this is a nice one too. trying it out. again.