[Meta] Make Backdrop4Good multilingual

[olafgrabienski]

We want to make Backdrop4Good a multilingual site. The project serves as a use case to improve Backdrop's multilingual capabilities in general.

This meta issue is for the purposes of an overview of the project's goals, it's progress, and some contextual information.

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Goals

We want to be able to use the website and show content in languages other than English.

0. Install Backdrop in different languages.
1. Add and configure languages.
2. Translate the user interface.
3. Localize regional settings.
4. Enable and prepare content translation
5. Translate content.
6. Translate configuration
7. Translate menus
8. Translate taxonomy
9. Add and translate more languages.

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0. Install Backdrop in different languages

Core issue: 2217

As the Backdrop4Good site had already been installed, an installation in a different language wasn't necessary. Other languages were (and will be) added in steps 1. and 2. below.

1. Add and configure languages

Issue: #21

I'll start with German as that is my native language. Feel free to suggest the addition of other languages.

• Enable the Language module.
• Enable the Locale module.
• Add German as a language.
• Configure language negotiation.

2. Translate the user interface

• Import German language files from a Backdrop translation server (not possible yet, see [Meta] Roadmap backdrop-ops/localize.backdropcms.org#5)
• Import German language files from Drupal translation server (official Workaround at the moment)
  • Drupal 7 core language file from http://ftp.drupal.org/files/translations/7.x/drupal/drupal-7.56.de.po
  • Language files from D7 modules which are in Backdrop core, for now: CKEditor, Date, Email, Link, Pathauto, Redirect, Token, and Views
• Translate strings which are not covered by the imported language files.
  There are many Backdrop specific strings and there will be more and more. That's why we need our own translation server.

3. Localize regional settings

admin/config/regional/settings:

• Default country (localization not needed on this site)
• First day of week
• Default time zone (not needed)

admin/config/regional/date-time:

• Date and time formats

4. Enable and prepare content translation

Issue: #27

• Enable the Content Translation module
• Enable Multilingual support for content types: Enabled, with translation
  • Page
  • Post (not in use at the moment)
  • Webform
• Configure URL alias pattern settings
  • Enable transliteration
  • Strings to Remove: Add strings for other languages, or: don't declare any strings here
• Check URL alias patterns for language specific needs
  • Language specific URL alias patterns are not necessarily needed at the moment, but:
  • nice to have: language specific alias for the webform content type
• Assign language
  • Move the language selector at top of the node/edit forms (below Title)
  • Assign English language to existing content

Reminder: check backdrop/backdrop-issues#2637 about transliteration

5. Translate content

• Preparation

  • Disable display of translation links on node display
    See issue Add option to disable translation links #31.

• Pages

  • Homepage
    • French
    • German
    • Greek
    • Spanish
  • Partners
    • French
    • German
    • Greek
    • Spanish

• Webforms

  • Apply for Assistance
  • Volunteer

• Custom blocks
  See issue Translate blocks #39.
  See also the section below about configuration translation.
  Update, two new core issues: Translate custom blocks, Blocks of existing content should follow the translation system

  • Logo icons (no language specific content so far, but the image may get an alt attribute in the future)
  • Call to Action icons
  • One liner CTAs
  • Sponsors
  • Footer

Related:

• Menu items?
• Show languages on admin/content.
  See issue Show languages on admin/content #37.

6. Translate configuration

• Custom blocks? (technically configuration, from a user perspective content)
  See issue Translate blocks #39.
• other blocks
• probably more, tba

7. Translate menus

At the moment, there are no menus on backdrop4good.org but in case we add a menu, let's have a look at the respective core issue: Make menu items translatable in core

8. Translate taxonomy

No taxonomy yet on backdrop4good.org. Core issue: Translate taxonomy terms

9. Add and import more languages

• Spanish
• French
• Greek

Please suggest more languages in the comments.

[serundeputy]

• Spanish

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PR is here: #22

[serundeputy]

@olafgrabienski
I've merged the Spanish language PR.

I've added a build step to platform to automatically import config drush bcim -y :)

The Spanish lang is present but both German and Spanish are 0% translated: https://test-kmxkvpi-kjohzmmntno4i.us.platform.sh/admin/config/regional/language

perhaps I'm missing a step

[serundeputy]

• French

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PR for French: #30

[olafgrabienski]

The Spanish lang is present but both German and Spanish are 0% translated

perhaps I'm missing a step

As discussed via Gitter, in the meantime Spanish is not only present but also translated (on the live site). It's a bit confusing how it works, I'll try to explain:

In my local environment I had imported the files with the Spanish language strings (drupal-7.56.es.po, views-7.x-3.18.es.po and so on) using the translation import interface on admin/config/regional/translate/import. The issue is that such interface translations don't get saved as configuration files but in the database, that's why they can't be merged via Git.

So, to deploy translations, the missing step would have been to import my local database to the remote site (sounds questionable to me) or to import the locally already imported .po files of the new language once again on the remote site. For the moment, I'm fine with the latter.

[serundeputy]

merging PR autoclosed this; reopening.