Install a language

Last updated on
7 September 2016

Drupal 7 will no longer be supported after January 5, 2025. Learn more and find resources for Drupal 7 sites

Multilingual support is provided by the Locale core module.

See Install Drupal in another language for adding a language when installing Drupal.

Add a language

  1. Enable the Locale module
  2. Go to the language configuration page:
    • Drupal 6: Administer > Site Configuration > Languages
      (admin/settings/language)
    • Drupal 7 and later: Configuration > Regional and language > Languages
      (admin/config/regional/language)

    On that page:

  3. Add the languages you want
  4. Set a default language.
    Never change the default language, otherwise things will break! In D6 you can only change the default language once. See comment below.
  5. Continue with the Automatic or Manual method below to update your strings

Update strings (automatic method)

  1. Install the Localization update (l10n_update) module (see instructions)
  2. Update the translations for your languages:
    • Drupal 6: Administer > Site Building > Translate Interface > Update
      (admin/build/translate/update)
    • Drupal 7 and later: Configuration > Regional and language > Translate Interface > Update
      (admin/config/regional/translate/update)

Update strings (manual method)

  1. Download the translation files you want from localize.drupal.org.
  2. Upload the translation files to your site:
    • Drupal 6: Administer > Site Building > Translate Interface > Import
      (admin/build/translate/import)
    • Drupal 7 and later: Configuration > Regional and language > Translate Interface > Import
      (admin/config/regional/translate/import)

In Drupal 6, contributed modules and themes may have translation files included. This is no longer the case as of Drupal 7.

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