default language and string translations

Im sure there is a way to avoid clusterf**k when changing default languages and in my naive mind it looks easy, without too much blood/sweat using current system and introducing "Language neutral" for all translated strings to sync.

Basically problem is that Locale assumes all strings from core to be English when in fact they are not¹, they must be treated as Language neutral. English should be added as new seperate Language in multilingual systems with possibility to copy all strings from Neutral to English.

¹ Some strings are English, some are American English, some are bad English, few are English with typos :)

My proposal is fix in i18n or new module that introduces Language neutral, sets it as default, does not show it to front end users and (optionally) find other ways to provide path with no prefix for new "virtual" default language that can be ANY other language including English.

Lets discuss. Opinions welcome!

Language neutral is English. Every string in every module must be written in English, it is a requirement for correct functionality.

http://api.drupal.org/api/function/t/6
Parameters
$string A string containing the English string to translate.

i18nstring is created for user submitted string translation. There are sites which don't have English language so it is logical to use the default language as source, therefore not requiring to translate any user submitted string into English..

whinning about it on the issue tracker

i follow 2 closed issues and nobody whines there, they sit silently and are sad :)

Nor D7 will do it.

Even sadder :)

source strings need to have a language so you know from which language you are translating.

Not necessarily. I dont care what is language of source strings, most of the time they will be english anyway.

the core issue is that switching default languages will fck up translated strings. That is massive fail. How about we think for a moment what is the less painful way to fix it.

I had an idea yesterday, what if developer needs web site in french and russian, but wants to work/synchronize content in english. So he installs drupal with english default + fr and ru languages. He wants users to see french as default and be able to switch to russian, but default english is hidden.

the idea would be that he NEVER EVER switches default language, its english forever (not to kill translated strings). default french for front end is set in apache config or (...your suggestion here), like something.com = something.com/fr

is it possible to switch to russian in this apache setup?

Hi there!
I am with mansspams. Even though my point is somehow different:
I just don't want to have the functionality of t() or i18n lost if i view a drupal page in english.
By using i18n (and t()) I'm able to switch default text outputs of modules the way I want it. It's really handy. Not only in terms of translation but also in terms of modifying texts to my needs. May I want to have a certain module to spit out a different text at a certain place - I can do that nicely by using i18n - as long as I'm not trying to change english texts :(

So many systems are using gettext functionality to change outputs generally...
...why not drupal too?
I'm getting sick of jumping in each modules source code to change the english texts and get them lost in the next upgrade of the same module.

Cheers to mansspams.
And the problem lays even deeper in my eyes.

I really wanna know the solution. I am driven crazy by this.

hey, guys. i just came up with a solution to this problem. which is:

1. at /admin/settings/language/, keep the default language to English.
2. edit the language "English". leave empty for path prefix and enter "http://en.you-domain.com" for the language domain.
3. edit the language that you wish to set to default. leave empty for path prefix and enter "http://www.your-domain.com" for the language domain.
4. at /admin/settings/language/configure, choose "Domain only" for language negotiation.

now when the user visits http://www.your-domain.com, your preferred language will show up and English is still the "default" language.

As I really needed to solve above commented issue for my project, I have implemented the following hacks to Drupal core:

1. To hide English from the language switcher:
   As the default language prefix is not mandatory, I omitted the language without prefix from the locale module block.
   See locale_block() in attached locade.module.

2. To keep English as language for t() but to have some other language as default for the site, I implemented language_default_hack()
   function and used it instead of the language_default() in language.inc. My language_default_hack() function gets the languages and
   determines the first one without prefix as the default one.

Attached files have txt extension to be able to attach them here.

All the best,
Matej

1- at /admin/settings/language/, change default language to danish(or any other then english).
2-edit the language "English". enter en in prefix.
3-Save and Test

Thanks to dan.hu for guiding to the solution

refer this

http://drupal.org/files/issues/locale_30.patch

This problem has just bitten me. My question is, why not ask the user, when switching the default language, what language to choose for input? Or maybe just add a totally separate choice in the language screen asking what language to consider the input language?

Let's say I've added all these terms in English and switched the default language to Ar, it just doesn't make sense to consider everything I've input to date in Ar (and tell the client to go and start modifying all these terms because the default language changed!).

I don't know much about this coding and database wise, but it seems the only problem now is that input language is always assumed to be the default language. I'm guessing there's more to it than this database wise, and would be very very glad if someone explained the scene in the backend.

All feedback on this is more than welcome. And if I can really understand what's going on here I'm more than prepared to submit patches to i18n or core. Just need someone to put me on the right track.