localization

In the previous part of this series, we talked in detail about translations for nodes. For this next piece, I've promised to cover site settings and layout (blocks and friends). As the multilingual landscape progressed (Jose Reyero released the first beta version of the Internationalization module for Drupal 7!), I decided to dedicate this piece to site settings only. That sounds pretty basic and boring, but we have some good news and improvements here that developers should hear too! Read on for more information on how this crucial piece of the puzzle looks like in Drupal 7.

In the second part of my article series, before we got on a developer detour, we discussed that Drupal's software interface translation can be pre-provided and collaborated on by the community, but this time we turn to your own content. What's considered content on a Drupal site? Well, in a broad sense, anything that you enter beyond the software user interface translation. For this article, we will limit our discussion to nodes only, and move on to the rest of the structure and page building elements in later pieces.

As promised at the end of the previous piece of my Drupal 7 multilingual post series, this part is turning to developers to spread some awareness of new features and possibilities in Drupal 7. We've talked about context support and new language selection features, and I'd like to share some tips with you to use them right. I'd also like to share an updated version of my Drupal 6 localization cheat sheet as well as its appropriate version for Drupal 7 with you and look at how can you hook into the heart of the language system.

The previous piece in my series covered the basic language features in Drupal 7, including setting up which languages are available. Merely adding a language to your site will not make Drupal do much though. The site "in that language" will still look entirely English. The reason for this is that Drupal works with English as the default interface language and will fall back on that each time you have no translation for something. Until you provide Drupal with translations, it will still be entirely English. While weaved into my Drupal 7 multilingual series, changes explained herein affect Drupal users on all Drupal versions. Let's see how obtaining and working with translations changed not so recently and how can you get most out of that on Drupal 7!

This is part one in a series of posts on the new multilingual features in Drupal 7 core and contrib. I was sadly not as involved in the core mutilingual work that I wanted to (was busy working on localize.drupal.org), so I need a refresher myself on some of the finer details of what is going on. Therefore my journey through the new features, which I thought would be useful for you dear readers too. Thankfully many bright folks picked up the work and drove a good bunch of new functionality in terms of multilingual support into the new version. Let's begin!