Multilingual Variables

You must switch the site language while in the administration pages to set the value for each language.

And you must also switch the presentation language to match the site language. If not, it will mess up.

And, don't forget to change the site and presentation language each time you maintain the site information, otherwise you will mess up your site information strings.

Nice feature, and so user-friendly :(

Like a lot of the i18n features, this can be hard to understand the first time, so here's a more detailed explanation of some steps.

To keep things simple to begin with, just change one feature, the default front page for each language. This is a good place to start because the default front page seems to be the most obvious feature that simply will not work properly on a multilingual site (unless you follow the instructions on this page or figure out some other hack/workaround).

1. As explained above, add some code to the end of settings.php. If uncertain, make a backup of settings.php first. You probably need to temporarily change the permissions for settings.php to 644 to edit it. Change back to 444 after you save it.

The difference between this code and the code above is just that the '//' at the beginning of most lines makes those lines into comments so they have no effect. Remove '//' later when you're ready to implement each feature. It's easier to understand what's going on if you just change one thing at a time.

So we only actually added 'site_frontpage' at the moment. Every other variable is behind a '//' and has no effect.

2. To test this new i18n variable, it's best to have the standard language switcher block enabled on every page. If you can't see it, enable it at Administer › Site building › Blocks

3. Now go to the admin page Administer › Site configuration › Site information

And... because of the new variable, 'site_frontpage', that you just added to settings.php, 'This is a multilingual variable' should have appeared after 'Default front page' . If not, it probably means your change to settings.php was not effective for some reason.

4. Next, click on the switcher block to change to one of the other languages you are using

Obviously, this should change the language for the whole page - that's normal, but you should also see that the language prefix in the path after 'Default front page' has changed. (the prefix is the two letter language code such as /en/, /fr/, /de/, /es/, /fr/, /zh/, etc)

5. Now, after 'Default front page', type the location of the other language's front page.

6. If you stay on the Site Information page and switch languages on the switcher block, you can immediately see the Default front page path change to match it.

7. Repeat from step 4. for all the languages you're using.

// Primary and secondary links
'menu_primary_links_source',
'menu_secondary_links_source',

Above has no influence! Yes, it does state "this is a multilingual value" - but changes at different languages are NOT stored. Why? Same for Google Analytics code and such.

Solution?

Thanks for this helpful guide.
I've followed it - and it works great.

I would like to go further and make my site more 'multilingual', i.e the new user registration help message, the e-mail that notifies a new user that the account is waiting approval, the wellcoming e-mail message with the account details, and more...

where can i find the name of these variables, so i can add them as more lines in the list at the end of settings.php?

many thanks

The Solution doesn't work for me. I added the multilingual variable to the settings.php and a frontpage link for my second Language in Administer->Site Configuration. The Switching of the Frontpage to my second Language works but the switchback to the default language not.

link of the default language: mysite.com/node/3
link of the second language: mysite.com/en/node/4

If i want to switchback drupal takes the link: mysite.com/node4 and not mysite.com/node/3

Where is my fault? or is it a bug? Can somebody help me?

It is vital to run Cron after making something a variable.

After that you can make your changes per language.

Hi,

How to translate the name of a menu ?

One thing is not clear - how one adds variables found in a contributed module? For example, I want to provide multilingual settings in the iTweak Login module. I want to execute this code:

Questions:

1). Where is the correct place - some hook or toplevel of .module file? Can anyone shed some light on that?

2). I searched for 'i18n_variables' (grep) in whole drupal-6.12 directory - zero results. Is there a specific contrib module that needs to be installed?

Added settings, but there are no i18n_variable table in db, and changes affect all languages. Cron wont help.
Drupal 6.12

After you set a variable as multilingual be sure to save the default version first before translating it or you will lose your default.

Here is what we use at the bottom of settings.php:

/**
* Multilingual settings
*
* This is a collection of variables that can be set up for each language when i18n enabled.
* These are the basic ones for Drupal core, but you can add your own here.
* Find them by looking through source of page for name=
*/
$conf['i18n_variables'] = array(
'theme_default',
'file_directory_path',
'menu_primary_links_source',
'menu_default_node_menu',
'nice_menus_custom_css',
'site_mail',
'site_name',
'site_slogan',
'site_mission',
'site_footer',
'anonymous',
'site_frontpage',

/* User configuration */
'user_registration_help',
'user_mail_register_admin_created_subject',
'user_mail_register_admin_created_body',
'user_mail_register_no_approval_required_subject',
'user_mail_register_no_approval_required_body',
'user_mail_register_pending_approval_subject',
'user_mail_register_pending_approval_body',
'user_mail_password_reset_subject',
'user_mail_password_reset_body',
'user_mail_status_activated_subject',
'user_mail_status_activated_body',
'user_mail_status_blocked_subject',
'user_mail_status_blocked_body',
'user_mail_status_deleted_subject',
'user_mail_status_deleted_body',

/* Node help */
'blog_help',
'story_help',
'contact_form_information',

/* Location */
'location_default_country',
'location_settings_user',

/* Invite */
'invite_subject',
'invite_default_mail_template',

/* User_relationships */
'user_relationship_mailer_request_subject',
'user_relationship_mailer_request_message',
'user_relationship_mailer_cancel_subject',
'user_relationship_mailer_cancel_message',
'user_relationship_mailer_approve_subject',
'user_relationship_mailer_approve_message',
'user_relationship_mailer_disapprove_subject',
'user_relationship_mailer_disapprove_message',
'user_relationship_mailer_remove_subject',
'user_relationship_mailer_remove_message',
'user_relationship_mailer_pre_approved_subject',
'user_relationship_mailer_pre_approved_message',
'user_relationships_ui_msg_submitted',
'user_relationships_ui_msg_accepted',
'user_relationships_ui_msg_disapproved',
'user_relationships_ui_msg_cancel',
'user_relationships_ui_msg_default',
'user_relationships_ui_msg_removed',
'user_relationships_ui_msg_pending',
'user_relationships_ui_msg_pre_approved',
'user_relationships_ui_msg_too_many_relationships',
'user_relationships_ui_msg_existing_request',
'user_relationships_ui_msg_existing_relationship',
'user_relationships_ui_msg_not_accepting_requests',
'user_relationships_ui_msg_self_request',
'user_relationships_ui_msg_non_existant_user',
'user_relationships_ui_msg_non_existant_type',
'user_relationships_ui_msg_unknown_error',
'user_relationships_ui_msg_relationship_type_not_set',
'user_relationships_ui_msg_relationship_type_not_allowed',
);