localization

Whenever you spot an untranslated string on your Drupal site, you need to:

1. Remember the string or at least some unique identifier from the text.
2. In Drupal 6 go to Administration - Site building - Translate interface - Search tab; in Drupal 5 go to Administration - Site configuration - Localization - Manage strings tab.
3. Enter what you remembered in step 1 and hit submit.
4. Identify the string in the result list or if it is not found, go back to step 1 and find an actually unique part of the string to search for.
5. Hit Edit on the item in the result list if found.
6. A form with all languages are displayed, fill in the translations you want to provide.
7. Go back and check whether the translation was used properly.

This is quite time consuming and error prone. Of course a lot of people suggested that we should have a solution which gets closer to the user, but it was not implemented before. So here I am to tell you that there is a solution for you which just works and eliminates nearly all of the steps above.

Dries Knapen just posted about the 200th registration for DrupalCon Barcelona:

We just had our 200th registrant signing up for DrupalCon Barcelona. This is great news, and I'm sure a lot of other people are planning on joining us as well.

Yes, that 200th registrant was me. I was struggling with my bank for more then a month to get my cards (including a virtual MasterCard, which allows me to pay online as securely as possible finally). Then I was away for a week on holiday, so just as I am back, I noticed I can be the 200th registrant which was a good spot to catch :)

The organizers plan for 400 attendees, so 200 registrants a month and a half early seems to be quite fine. The registration is wide open, and session proposals are also accepted. Seems like I'll be involved with at least the following sessions if all end up in the final program:

• Multilingual Drupal: A big session about how you can make your site multilingual (with both core and contrib functionality) and what changed in Drupal 6. This fits into a pair of session spots with a break, as there are lots of stuff to talk about. I'll co-present this with Jose A Reyero and Ian Ward.
• Translating Drupal (the new way), where I'll present the results of my Google Summer of Code work: a web based translation system for Drupal project translations; as well as show best practices on how one can make his theme or module translatable.
• Drupal SoC Showcase, where I'll present a small intro to what I have done and direct listeners to the full featured presentation. There were lots of summer of code projects and so short time to fit all into one session.

Let's make sure that we can meet in Barcelona: register yourself for the conference, if you have not done already, and vote for the above sessions to make the final list.

Dear Drupal interface translators!

Your valuable work helps Drupal to actual world domination, so we try to support you all ways possible to be able to more efficiently organize your time to translate Drupal projects (the Drupal core system itself, as well as contributed modules, themes and install profiles).

There are big changes planned and in development for Drupal project translations. Make sure to read my Drupal Groups post if you are a Drupal translator or you would like to become one, but the current toolset scares you.

Bryan Ruby points out that many open source content management systems are started to think about multilanguage support as a core building block recently. Drupal 6 is one of these systems, and although it does not come with complete internationalization and translation features, it goes a long way compared to Drupal 5. Jose A. Reyero pulled together a nice comparision table of the Drupal 5 and 6 core multilanguage features.

I have been to REMIX 07 today, which was basically a rehash of some of the Microsoft MIX conference topics and presentations for a road show stop in Budapest, Hungary. Although I use much less Microsoft technology then I actually go to the conferences, I mostly enjoy going because it inspires me. I see cool new stuff which of course escalates into cool new stuff I would like to implement with my tool set.