This document discusses multilingual content in Drupal 7 and 8. It covers getting started with multilingual Drupal, translating content through both node-level and field-level translation, content translation workflows using modules like Translation Management Tool (TMGMT), and challenges and improvements in Drupal 7 and 8 multilingual support. It also lists additional learning resources and community events around multilingual Drupal.

1. Multilingual Content
in Drupal 7 and 8
Suzanne Kennedy

2. Multilingual Content
in Drupal 7 and 8

3. Multilingual Content
in Drupal 7 and 8
About Me
Co-founder of Evolving Web
Training, Development, Consulting
evolvingweb.ca
@suzanne_kennedy

4. Multilingual Drupal Training
evolvingweb.ca/training

5. Multilingual Content
in Drupal 7 and 8
1. Getting Started
3. Content Translation Workflows
• Multilingual Requirements • Why it’s Important
• What is Multilingual Drupal? • Translation Management
• Types of Drupal Text Modules
2. Translating Content 4. What’s Next?
• The Lifecycle of Drupal • Challenges in Drupal 7
Content Multilingual
• Translation Methods • Learn More & Contribute
• Planning Multilingual Content

6. Multilingual
Requirements

7. Why Multilingual?
• Reach a wider audience
• Expand to new markets
• Improve usability
• Search engine optimization
• Government regulations
• Company policy

8. Multilingual Resources
Personnel Resources
• User-Interface Translators • Contributed Translations
(localize.drupal.og)
• Content Translators
• Machine Translation
• QA for each Language
• Translation Manager

9. Internationalization
• aka i18n
• Developing a website that enables localization
of content and other elements.
• Separating elements that should be localized
so they can be specified for each locale.

10. Localization
• aka l10n
• Process of adapting a website for a certain
locale including:
• Translation of text and graphics
• Numeric, date and time formats
• Currency
• Time zones
• Legal requirements

11. What kind of site are you
building?
• How many languages do you need to support?
• Does the user interface need to be fully
translated?
• Do you have content in all languages? Is all the
content translated?
• What happens to untranslated content?

12. What is Multilingual
Drupal?

13. Foreign-language site

14. Multilingual Site

15. Multilingual Site with
Translation

16. Multilingual Modules
• Core:
• Locale
• Content Translation
• Contrib:
• i18n (Internationalization)
• Entity Translation

17. Types of Text in Drupal

18. Types of Text
Content
User interface (Code)
i18n Strings
Variables
User interface (User-Defined)

19. Built-in interface (Code)
Translation Interfaces Built-in interface (User-Defined)
in Drupal i18n Strings
i18n Strings
Variables Content

20. Types of Text
Content
Built-in interface (Code)
i18n Strings
Variables
Built-in interface (User-Defined)

21. Multilingual Content

22. What content
experience are you
building?

23. Fully Symmetric Experience
English Poilsh

24. Asymmetric Experience
French English

25. What about
untranslated content?

26. Show Untranslated Content

27. Hide Untranslated Content
French English

28. Content Translation
Methods

29. Content Translation
Methods
Node-Level Translation Field-Level Translation
Node 1 Node 2 Node 3 Node 1
(English) (French) (German)
Title Title Title Title Title Title
(English) (French) (German) (English) (French) (German)
Image Image Image Image

30. Node-Level Translation

31. Node-Level Translation
• Content Translation module (Drupal core)
• New node for each translation
• Nodes are mapped together in a translation
set

32. Translating Nodes
Translation Set
Node 1 Node 2 Node 3
(English) (French) (German)
tnid = 1 tnid = 1 tnid = 1
Title Title Image Title Image
Image
(English) (French) (German)

33. Benefits of Node-Level
Translation
• Asymmetric menus per language
• Language-specific features (flagging, sign-up,
moderation)
• Curation of content per language
• Works for node-based functionality (i.e. search)
• Use built-in ‘Flag as translation needs update’

34. Drawbacks of Node-Level
Translation
• Everything is language-specific by default
• Need to ‘synchronize’ data between nodes
• Too many nodes
• Doesn’t work for modelling language-neutral
things (groups of people, products, data)
• Only works for nodes

35. Translating a Node

36. Language-Specific
Properties

37. Properties per Translation
Translation Set
Node 1 Node 2 Node 3
(English) (French) (German)
tnid = 1 tnid = 1 tnid = 1
Title Title Image Title Image
Image
(English) (French) (German)
Menu Published Menu Published Menu Published
Settings Date Settings Date Settings Date

38. Field-Level Translation

39. Field-Level Translation
• Entity Translation module (contrib) provides
the UI
• Translation of fields instead of nodes
• Fields are translatable in core

40. Translating Fields
Node 1
Language-Specific Fields Language Independent
Title Title Title
Image Author
(English) (French) (German)
Body Body Body Facebook
Post Date
(English) (French) (German) Likes
A single node, with translations of certain
fields.

41. Language-Independent
Properties
• Flags • Entity references
• Voting Data • Panels nodes’ layout
• Signups • Content Access
• Nodequeue or • Social Media
Draggable Views Data Integration (Add This)
• Moderation /
Scheduler settings

42. Benefits of Field-Level
Translation
• Better model for language-neutral content:
• No need to sync properties
• 1 node ID
• Works with all kinds of entities:
• Taxonomy terms, users, etc.
• It’s the future!

43. Drawbacks of Field-Level
Translating
• Doesn’t work with core search or revisions
• Different UI for translators to learn
• Not compatible with node options or
multilingual select features from i18n
• Doesn’t work with ‘Flag as needs translation
update’
• Properties can’t be translated

44. Setting up Field Translation
for a Content Type

45. Setting up Field Translation

46. Translating the Title
drupal.org/project/title

47. Field Translation UI

48. Field Translation UI

49. Examples: Field vs.
Node-Level Translation

50. Example: Conference Session

51. Example: Carousel Item

52. Example: Webform

53. Content Translation
Methods
Node-Level Translation Field-Level Translation
Node 1 Node 2 Node 3
Node 1
(English) (French) (German)
Title Title Title Title Title Title
(English) (French) (German) (English) (French) (German)
Image Image Image Image

54. Life-cycle of a node
Published
Node Creation
Node 1
CSV User ‘Likes’
Node 1
x
the Node
Unpublished Node 1 Node 1
Node 1
Deleted
Node 1
Node 1
+ Comment Node 1
Flag as Offensive
Update

55. Field vs. Node Translation:
Conclusion
• Field-level translation is the right data model for
most use cases
• Will be default method for D8 core
• You can use it today on D7, but only if you’re
not afraid to get your hands dirty

56. Translating Other Entity
Types

57. Translate Core Entities
Translation of entities from core modules

58. Translate Users
Configure Fields Translate Users
Permissions

59. Translate Users:
Use Cases
• Team member profiles
• Multilingual community site
• Users who offer a service to users in more than
one language

60. Translate Users:
Drawbacks
• Single permission for users (can translate any
user entity)
• UI is not self-explanatory

61. Translate Terms
Configure Fields Translate Terms
Permissions

62. Translate Terms:
Use Cases
• Any vocabulary that is symmetric across
languages:
• Categories
• Destinations
• Medical Topics

63. Translate Terms:
Drawbacks
• Time-consuming to use translation UI
• Single permission for translating all
vocabularies
• Alphabetical listings in Views will use source
language

64. Translate Comments
Configure Fields Translate Comments
Permissions

65. Translate Comments:
Use Cases
• Travel website (machine translation of reviews)
• Government website (human translation of
questions + answers)

66. Translate Other Entities
Translation of entities from contributed modules
Entities need to
have fields and
include translation
support in
hook_entity_info()

67. Commerce Product Entity
Language-specific Language-neutral
• Title • SKU
• Description • Status
• URL • Image
• Price
• Quantity
Remaining
• Shopping Cart
Status

68. Commerce Product Entity

69. Commerce Product Entity

70. Commerce Product Entity

71. Content Translation
Workflows

72. Cost of Translation
• Time-consuming
• Expensive
• How can you speed up the process and
reduce the amount of text to be translated?

73. Content Translation
Workflow
1. Author creates a new node 2. Translator adds a translation
Author Translator

74. Creating a Translation
Workflow from Scratch
• Permissions for translators
• Rules and Flag to trigger translation requests
• Views for Translators

75. Permissions for Translation
• Node-Level Translation: Translators need to be
able to create content
• Field-Level Translation: Permission to edit the
entity
• No granular translation permissions per
content type by default (use i18n_access)

76. Typical UI for Translators
Permissions
Rules
Views

77. Challenges
• Different UI for Entity Translation/Content
Translation (Confusing)
• Professional translators need to learn Drupal
• Need to build system for reviewing translations

78. Translation Workflows
for Content:
TMGMT Module

79. Translation Management
Tool (TMGMT)
drupal.org/project/tmgmt

80. Translation Management
Tool (TMGMT)
Drupal

81. Translators
• Microsoft (Bing) Translator (machine)
• Google Translate (machine)
• Nativy (human)
• MyGengo (human)
• Supertext (human)
• One Hour Translation (human)

82. Microsoft Translator

83. Microsoft Translator

84. Requesting Translations

85. Requesting Translations

86. Review Translation

87. Review Translation

88. Translate in Bulk

89. Benefits of TMGMT
• Field-level and node-level translation
• Also translate i18n strings (in development)
• Easy to configure
• Human/machine translator plugins
• Write your own translator plugin

90. Challenges in Drupal 7
• Choosing a content translation method
• Permissions for Translators
• Choosing contributed modules
• Translating custom elements (Webforms)
• Improve Translation UI
• Building translation workflows in Drupal

91. Looking Forward to D8
• Translatable properties
• More things are entities
• Better UI for adding/configuring languages
• Come to Gábor’s Core Conversation tomorrow

92. Contrib Modules for Entity
Translation
• Entity Translation Feeds (et_feeds)
• Search API Entity Translation (search_api_et)

93. Learn More & Contribute
• Multilingual Q&A BoF (Wed 10:15)
• Drupal 8’s Multilingual Wonderland (Wed 1pm)
• Apache Solr Multilingual BoF (Today 5pm)
• Localize.Drupal.org BoF (Thurs 10:45)
• TMGMT BoF (Thurs at 1pm)
• Code Sprint (Friday-Sunday)