PSD to WordPress, PSD to HTML, PSD to Drupal

In this article I would like to talk about Drupal translate interface. Standard Drupal installation already contains several modules that allow you to edit new languages for your site and translate text messages and general content on the site (modules “locale” and “translate“). If you want to build a good multilingual site we also recommend you to install Internationalization module. Internalization module largely extends standard multilingual Drupal features.

All these modules are good for development stage. They allow us to work with many tools to create good multilingual site where you can translate every part of it.

However when it comes to content population and translation to various languages you have to do many things that can make you crazy. We are not going to talk about node translation or blocks now. We will talk about small text messages on the site like some help text, error messages, and text inside the theme, modules, form input field labels etc. To translate each word or sentence you need to go to admin interface, then use search, find and choose correct word/sentence to translate, then go to the main site and make sure everything is correct. If you need to translate more than 10-20 messages – it’s a very big piece of work!

There are modules that allow you to import/export all language translations into a special format – .po file. However if you need to edit this file you will have to install a special software on your computer and this file will only allow you to translate one language at a time.

We decided to create an alternative module which will make life of Drupal users much easier. Finally it’s finished and we would like to represent it to you. After you install and activate it you will see a special window where you will be able to enable/disable the module and highlight standard elements – blocks and nodes (we will look under the hood of this feature below).

How it works?

You just turn on quick translate mode and see all messages you can translate highlighted. When you click them – you see the form where you can enter all translations for all available languages in the system. This also works for form elements: labels, input fields, text areas and even select boxes. This module does not allow to translate nodes or create new blocks in new language for now but we might add this feature in future versions.

We also included a feature to highlight standard drupal entries like nodes and blocks on your page. This was done to help you see why you cannot translate some part of the page. So if this is a Node or a Block – you should use a usual Drupal translate link for it. This will also help you find text which is printed without Drupal t() function, so this means that theme or module doesn’t suppose that part being translatable.

Unfortunately this module was impossible to implement without editing Drupal core files. We added auto-install feature – this module creates a patch automatically (if you agree with this on the settings page). This is a very small patch which adds one line of code to the standard Drupal t() function, so we can track its usage. Don’t worry about security and future updates of Drupal core – you can update your Drupal with new versions! The module can define that Drupal files have been updated and you can run the patch one more time. This patch does not affect any performance issues and the site will work the same for usual users. Also this module does not include any CSS or JavaScript if you do not have permissions to use this module.

Quick Translate installation

Module installation is the same as any other Drupal module. Just copy it to the right modules folder and activate it in admin panel.

After activation you will see a new tab on Translate interface admin pages. This tab contains settings for this module where you can enable/disable it. Also this page used to run Drupal core files patch. You should agree to run it and if everything is OK the Settings page will display.

The first setting is used for setting up Drupal initial language. 99% you do not need to change this setting. The next setting is used to enable/disable quick interface popup on the frontend. Quick Interface will appear only on site pages and will not appear on admin pages and node edit form. Maybe after community review and your comments we will add new settings to allow you to choose the place where you want to see this popup.

Usage instructions

After enabling the module you will see a small popup where you can turn on/off quick interface and nodes / blocks highlight. I’ll describe the quick interface. When you turn it on you can see some text outlined with red dotted borders. You can translate this text by clicking it.

All changes will appear after page refreshes however the translated lines are marked with asteriks (*) at the end.

Also we should note that if you use Cufon technique on your page quick interface will disable it, so you can translate Cufon text too. So don’t scare if markup can be a bit different.

Download

You can download our free quick translate module here.

Tags: Drupal

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 at 2:04 pm and is filed under Implementation, Just Labs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.