Multilingual Sites that Translate Well

Drupal's t() function allows translating texts from one language to others. In order to work right, you must create texts that translate well. We’ll show you frequent mistakes and how to correct them.

Localization 101

Once you've created a site, using the t() function, Drupal will scan the texts and send them to translation. The String translation mechanism allow replacing the texts in the original language with texts in other languages.

Translators cannot change anything else in the site or in the HTML. They only translate the texts that you give them.

Some of the things that translators cannot do:

• Change the order in which texts appear
• Merge or split texts
• Translate texts that are not inside the t() function

Give your translators complete sentences

When translators get single words to translate, it's practically impossible to translate them correctly. They need to see full sentences in order to translate with meaning.

A common case is the login message:

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Too often, folks create this message using this code:

<?php print t('You must be') ?> <a href="<?php print url('user/login') ?>">
<?php print t('logged in ') ?></a> <?php print t('to post a comment.') ?>

This means that the translator now sees three strings to translate:

You must be
logged in
to post a comment.

Each of these strings makes little sense.

Did you know that the English word "be" has several meanings in Spanish?

Be can mean what you are (ser) or where you are (estar). Translators cannot tell which one you mean when they just see "you must be".

To fix this and create a sentence that translates well, we'll merge all these strings into a single sentence, as it's supposed to be in the first place.

We'll use placeholders to insert values from other functions into the sentence.

<?php print t('You must be <a !link>logged in</a> to post a comment' ),
 array('!link' => 'href="' . url('user/login') . '"') ) ?>

Now, it's crystal clear. The translator sees one sentence, from start to finish. If needed, the translator can swap between parts of the sentence and write it correctly in any language.

Beyond complete sentences

When we create multilingual sites, we need to remember that translation is not everything. Localization means adapting the site to a different language, country and conventions.

We need to create interface strings that allow adjusting things like:

• Number formats
• Date formats
• Units
• Phone numbers (adding country codes)
• Addresses (adding the country)
• and many others...

The first and most important step is understanding. Once we understand that localization only begins with adding t() functions, we'll create much better websites that read natural in any language.