Playing with Drupal 6's multilanguage support

Here are some issues that have been identified during today's Montreal Drupal Meetup. This document was written collectively by some of the attendees in a Gobby session (so please don't shoot the messenger! ;-)). A wiki page seemed like the next logical step. Maybe some of these points should be posted in the issue queue (if you do so, it could be nice to edit this page and add the link).

This is not very exhaustive, but for most of us it was a first look at Drupal 6. Great new installer, by the way. Anyone, don't be afraid to try this stuff, it's so easy to install!

Patches that were tested:

• Translating nodes
• Language switcher block
• Dynamic translation (applied, but doesn't do anything at this time)

Usability / User Interface

• Once the translation module is activated, it would be nice if a couple of other options could then be set:
  • First, the Language negotiation settings should move from 'None' to 'Path prefix with language fallback' (the third option), as this seems to be the best option for a true multilingual site. Activating this option also activates the users language setting option. [Issue]
  • Second, the English language should be given an 'en' path prefix. By default it has none. [Issue]
• The help text of /i18n/admin/build/translate should contain a link to /i18n/admin/settings/language
• The "Text group" section on /admin/build/translate/import is not user-friendly/comprehensible... perhaps it would be clearer if there were other options.... but as it is I can't figure out what that really means.

Language Switcher block

• This block only works when you select either of the two path prefix options in Language negotiation. We didn't test it with the domain prefix options. [Issue]

Node Translation

• There is currently no way to see which node is the "source" (maybe it could be shown in /node/*/translate). [Issue]
• Looking at what is shown under the Translate tab, there's no clear indication that a translation needs to be updated, even though it can be marked as "updated" in the node edition page. [Issue]
• Would be nice: A way to select an existing node as a translation. [Issue]

Custom Content Type Translation

• User created "Title field label: " and "Body field label:" not translatable. I understand that user contributed content is not supposed to end up in the localisation table but we do need some way to translate this stuff... otherwise users are forced to created different/analogous content types for each language. Note that the "Name" of the custom content type is entered into the localisation table.

Site Information Translation

• Even after applying the dynamic translation patch ... the site infomation doesn't seem to be translatable via the usual method (i.e. enter into using interface in one language... switch interface language and translate the fields)

Contact Form Translation

• There is no (visible) way to translate the contact forms.... This is similar to the Site Information translation... Previously this was resolved by adding the 'contact_form_information' to the $conf['i18n_variables'] array.

Language Negotiation

• Turning on the "Path prefix with language fallback" on /admin/settings/language/configure breaks the "home" links in breadcrumb: < front > is tagged onto the end of the link, making it invalid. [Issue]