OC Drupal meetup - Drupal Multilingual strategy

1. Multilingual Strategy for
Drupal
OC Drupal - Feb 2013
Mariano Crivello

2. Large companies choosing Drupal
Every day large multi-national
companies are selecting Drupal as
their web system of choice
● Scalability
● Cost
● Ability to manage multiple
language content from a single
system

3. Questions you should ask
● Which Languages?
○ Regional logic?
i.e. Spain serves :
English, Spanish, French, Italian
● Who will be translating content?
○ Web service
■ Cheap
■ Prone to error
■ Not good for Industry specific terminology
○ Translation service
■ Works
■ Expensive. (starts at about $350/pp.)

4. Questions you should ask (cont.)
How will you manage workflow?
● Quality Control
○ How will you manage the sign off of content?
● Wait for translations to publish?
○ What is your publication time dependencies
● Is there Industry specific terminology
○ Mapping terminology upfront is important for
agencies and services alike.

5. Two Major Methods for Translation
● Content translation
(i18n, locale)
● Entity translation
(the future)

6. Comparison Chart
Content translation Entity translation
only works with nodes works with any entity type
one node per language (copies nodes) one entity for ALL languages
(fields are translated)
uses core node title field Requires Title module for titles
need multiple menu links for one node can theoretically use one menu for all translations
breadcrumbs just work breadcrumbs can show wrong translation
Views language filtering just works Views language filtering needs a patch/module
XMLSitemap works XMLSitemap doesn’t work (work in progress)
Metatags Quick works per language Only works for English nodes
Bean blocks don’t work Bean blocks work nicely

7. Organic Groups
● Can help manage regional language logic.
● Permission structure for regional content
managers.
○ Allows for independent workflows for each
region

8. Translation Services
● Microsoft (Bing) Translator (machine)
● Google Translate (machine)
● Nativy (human)
● MyGengo (human)
● Supertext (human)
● One Hour Translation (human)

9. Translation Standard
XLIFF (XML Localisation Interchange File Format)
is an industry standard format that has been
adopted by most translation systems and
agencies.

10. Workflow management
● Workflow module
○ Build publication process
○ Quality control
● The Translation Management Tool (TMGMT)
module
○ Interfaces with external web services

11. Pain Points
● Menu translation
● Taxonomy translation
● Cost for human translation

12. Resources
Modules:
● Entity translation
● Translation Management (TMGMT)
● Workflow

13. Resources (cont.)
BOOK - Drupal 7 Multilingual Sites
http://www.packtpub.com/drupal-7-multilingual-sites/book

14. Resources (cont.)