Multilingual Image Management

A picture is worth a thousand words, so it's pretty important that these words be in the right language. Translation Management includes an Image Translation admin page that helps content managers set translations for images, Flash and other embedded media.

Central Control Over Multilingual Media

This admin page allows content managers to specify rules for how to replace images in contents.

For example, you can tell it that if an English image is called machines.png, the Spanish replacement will be machines_es.png. Alternatively, the translated images can keep the exact same name, but be stored in a language directory, so it would be called es/machines.png.

Image Replacement When Saving Translations

Once the admin sets the rules for replacing images, the Translation Management module is responsible for the actual replacement.

When translators save translations, the module scans it for images. It checks if you've supplied a replacement image. If so, it replaces the image in the translated contents. This replacement is done once, in the database, so there's no speed penalty when displaying pages.

You can supply replacement images after translation complete too. In this case, you can click on the button to scan translated contents.

Translating ALT and TITLE Attributes

The ALT and TITLE attributes in the HTML are translated normally, along with the content. When translators work on content, they translate all the texts. These attributes are sent to translation, just like everything else. So, the only missing step it to replace the SRC attribute, pointing to the translated image itself. This is the purpose of this function.

Interaction with Translation Services

Image replacement in Drupal is especially important when you're working with a translation service (like our own ICanLocalize). The translators work on dozens of different pages each day, so allowing them to concentrate on contents, without worrying about managing links to images can save a lot of time.

This way, translators only need to translate the texts, while site admins supply replacement media. The module takes the translations from the translators and the media replacement rules and produces the final HTML.