This document summarizes building multilingual websites with Drupal. It discusses the Locale module for adding language support, content translation vs entity translation modules, and handy internationalization modules. It also covers challenges like right-to-left script support and gotchas when content and site languages differ. Drupal 8 improves on this with entity translation built-in and wider multilingual capabilities across elements.

1. Building Multilingual Websites With
Drupal
Sam Murray / Developer, Cogapp
DrupalCamp Brighton 2015
0

2. What we'll cover
Context - sites we've worked on at Cogapp over the last few years
Why multilingual websites?
Drupal 7 - multilingual out of the box
Content translation vs. Entity translation
Useful modules
Right-to-Left scripts
Drupal 8

3. Cogapp +
Multilingual Drupal

4. Qatar Digital Library

5. Qatar Digital Library

6. Qatar Museums

7. Qatar Museums

8. Kubota Collection

9. Kubota Collection

10. Relate: What's Next?

11. Relate: What's Next?

12. App Publisher
English
French
German
Chinese (Simplified)
Hebrew
and more...

13. Why multilingual
websites?

14. Non-English speaking web users
~75% web content was English in 1998
Now roughly 30%
Arabic web users:
Fastest increase in top 10 languages of the net
2000: 2,560,337 users
2013: 135,610,819 users
> 10x faster than increase in English speakers online
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm

15. Language extinction
Only 5% of the world's languages represented online
Unesco: up to half of the world's languages extinct by the end of the century
Diverse web prevents cultural and economic hegemony and inequality
Vannini L., Le Crosnier H. Net.Lang: Towards The Multilingual Cyberspace. C&F Éditions: Caen, France.
2012

16. Multilingual Drupal

17. Locale module (core)
Add languages to your site
Translate the Drupal interface
Language detection and selection
URL format (fr.example.com or example.com/fr)

18. Language installation interface

19. Interface translation
<?php t('This is translatable'); ?>
<?php t('My name is @name', array('@name' => $name)); ?>

20. Content Translation (core)
Associate a node with a language
Relate translations of content to each other

21. Content translation
vs. Entity translation

22. Content translation
Core module in Drupal 6 and 7; not in Drupal 8
Provides ability for you to translate nodes
Each translation of a node is a node in itself
Pro: easier for language site to differ
Con: only nodes are translatable

23. Enable translation on a content type

24. Entity translation
Contrib module in Drupal 7 (beta); core in Drupal 8
Provides ability for you to translate fieldable entities
Define which fields can be translated
Pro: far more can be translated
Pro: core support in D8
Con: D7 core search and revisions not supported
Con: D7 all translations must be provided before any can be pubished
Con: D7 properties can't be translated
global $language; // Site language
global $language_content; // Content language
$entity->field_body['fr'][0]['value'];
$entity->field_body[$language->language][0]['value'];
$entity->field_body[$language_content->language][0]['value'];
$emw->field_body->value(); // Uses $language (site language)

25. Enable translation on a content type

26. Enable translation on a field

27. Adding a translation (Arabic)

28. Entity translation interface

29. Choose a method and stick with it

30. Handy modules

31. Internationalization modules (i18n,
i18n_*)
Extends multilingual support in Drupal 6 + 7
Taxonomy translation
Multilingual blocks
Multilingual variables
Some overlaps with Entity Translation module, but the 2 work together

32. Localization client
On-page interface translation

33. Gotchas

34. Gotchas
Content editing when site language != content language (e.g. entity
references)
Menu translation - various methods, none perfect
Fonts (particurly webfonts) - do they have all of the characters you need?
Including bold? Including light? .ttf? .svg? .eot?

35. Right-to-Left scripts

36. LTR / RTL
Lorem ipsum... ----->
<----- ...‫ﺃأﻱي‬ ‫ﻭوﻗﺎﻡم‬ ‫ﻳﯾﺫذﻛﺭر‬

37. RTL Scripts/Languages
Arabic Script ==> Arabic, Persian, Urdu
Hebrew Script ==> Hebrew, Yiddish
Thaana Script ==> Dhivehi (Maldives)
Syriac Script ==> Syriac (ancient Aramaic language)

38. Arabic
Basic alphabet = 28 characters
Eastern Arabic numbers - Left-to-Right!
Caseless
Italics = :(
Some punctuation marks are different
Comma = ،٬
Question mark = ‫؟‬
Mostly uses the same punctuation marks used in English

39. RTL on the web
HTML 'dir' attribute
<html dir="rtl"></html>
<p dir="ltr"></p>
CSS 'direction' property
CSS 'unicode-bidi' property
div {
direction:rtl;
unicode-bidi: bidi-override;
}
Unicode left-to-right mark - HTML &lrm;
Unicode right-to-left mark - HTML &rlm;
These go before a character to specify where it should be placed in
relation to the previous character

40. Problems with bi-directionality
Some "English" ‫ﺃأﻱي‬ ‫ﻭوﻗﺎﻡم‬ ‫ﻳﯾﺫذﻛﺭر‬
<p dir="ltr">Some "English" ‫أي‬ ‫وﻗﺎم‬ ‫/<ﻳﺬﻛﺮ‬p>
‫ﺃأﻱي‬ ‫ﻭوﻗﺎﻡم‬ ‫ﻳﯾﺫذﻛﺭر‬ "Some "English
<p dir="rtl">Some "English" ‫أي‬ ‫وﻗﺎم‬ ‫/<ﻳﺬﻛﺮ‬p>

41. Drupal 8

42. Drupal 8
Content translation is obsolete
Entity translation out of the box
Much wider support for translation across the different Drupal elements
4 core modules
http://www.drupal8multilingual.org/