Drupal 6 - multi install - 2 languages, default language doesn't work as in Drupal 5

By alliax on 7 Mar 2008 at 11:06 UTC

Hello,
I've a multi install of drupal 6 with french po files available.
When I start a new domain name install, I have the option to start with english or french
I start a new french website, so I choose french, but once everything is installed I want my own user, the administrator user, to have all menus in english because I like it better.

It doesn't work. I go to my account / edit / switch my language to english, but still everything is in french

In drupal 5 it was different because I always had to start a new domain name install in english, then activate the locale module, import a large french po file, set french as default language, go to my account and set my own default language to english.

Are you aware of that in drupal 6 ? Does it happen to you?

How do you do to have a website in french/spanish/whatever and have your own user's interface all in english?

Cheers,
James

Comments

If you have no idea what I'm

alliax commented 15 March 2008 at 06:04

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, please tell me, because at the moment I don't know if there's a bug or if I screwed my installs somewhat...

I asked on the french drupal site and there's no answer either, but I guess it's because they don't try to set the administrator's default language back to english.. That's my guess because noone answers..

Late answer, but better than

HSAJ commented 27 March 2008 at 21:48

Late answer, but better than nothin i think ;)

I have the same problem, when i add a new language and import the strings i can choose the language in the private menu, but nothing happens. Only when i change the default language i see the other language, but all others r still unavailable.

Tested on 2 fresh Drupal 6 Installations.

Seems to be a Bug, but an official answer would be nice.

I don't know who to reach to

alliax commented 28 March 2008 at 04:24

I don't know who to reach to so that they try to understand what is the annoying bug we're pointing out.

Same problem here

Wojtek Kruszewski commented 18 May 2008 at 16:54

I installed Drupal 6.2
Downloaded and imported Polish translation
Selected Polish as default language
- works as expected
In admin's profile selected English
- completely no effect!

I filed an issue report:
http://drupal.org/node/259882

thank you for filling an

alliax commented 18 May 2008 at 17:56

thank you for filling an issue report, the problem isn't affecting a lot of users because most french webmasters for example will be happy with having the view of their french site in french, and only a small portion want to manage a french site in english.

I want to specificy again that with the same install, I create sites in french and english, but when in french I change the default language of the admin to english and it's still in french. When in english, the language of the admin is already english, so personnally I'm not bothered at all if I can't change the admin language to french and I didn't try either!

I think that if presented

Wojtek Kruszewski commented 18 May 2008 at 18:28

I think that if presented with two separate options: frontend_language and admin_language, more webmasters would select English for the latter.

Anyway, could you try my patch (http://drupal.org/node/259882#comment-848362)? It seems to solve the problem for me.

Hello, I think that for

alliax commented 20 May 2008 at 03:35

Hello, I think that for french webmasters, a lot of them are not really good in english and if you tell them all admin is translated in french (as it is currently) they won't bother with the english. In other countries people are maybe more used to english because they watch a lot of movies with subtitles, but in France all movies are dubbed and the english language education, although of several years, has really bad results compared to european countries, and not much is done at government level to change that lack of deep interest in english language from the mass population. The fact that we french have a very strong accent is not because we can't learn the british or american accent, it's because we're not exposed to it (songs hardly have accents) and we don't bother trying.

As for your patch, I believe it works, but I saw the other issue created and also there's a patch and I'm waiting until it's fixed in a nextrelease of drupal 6.3 hopefully. I can deal with the bug like I did for over 2 months now, it's just annoying that's it, but at least now I know the admin in french, so it's easier if I want to explain drupal to a french mate.

Thanks for your patch

barako commented 3 September 2008 at 21:32

Thank you so much for your patch Wojtek Kruszewski. I'm using it with Drupal 6.4.
I'm French but I don't think like alliax, it's better for me to work with the English interface than with the French one.

Then please learn to read my

alliax commented 4 September 2008 at 02:33

Then please learn to read my frenglish, because that's exactly what I'm saying, I'd like to be able to select english as my admin language and still keep french for the default language of the site. That's not possible except with a patch. That's what I and I suppose several french webmasters want, but let's say that most of the french webmasters wouldn't mind an admin in french, but me I mind, that's what I said all along :-)

But since I have this problem since march 2008, now I'm used to the admin in french, so I don't think about it anymore, but still I'd rather have english in my admin!

I need a english admin

julma commented 3 September 2008 at 21:39

I need a english admin interface too. And a french one for my users.

Thanks

English interface for admin and french interface for user

karimbolivia commented 19 September 2008 at 15:11

That's simple as that. How could we configure Drupal 6 to have an admin interface in english and a user interface in french? We used to work like this in Drupal 5, but now we don't have this option in Drupal 6. Any ideas?

I haven't found a solution

alliax commented 19 September 2008 at 17:33

I haven't found a solution yet which doesn't involve patching Drupal core, and I've kind of stopped looking for it anyway since I'm now used to both english and french interface. I don't know why someone made this decision but if I could punch him in the face I would gladly.

if anyone has a solution for

xqi commented 19 November 2008 at 02:15

if anyone has a solution for this, please post it. even it requires code change.

this new design is not smart at all.

as an administrator, I want to see the english interface because I get used to it. all the drupal terms are learnt through english. however all of my users are non-english speakers.

isn't that simple? I want myself always see english, but other people see language B.

but i could not figure out how to do this in drupal 6. at least it does not behave consistently.

i opened an issue here:

http://drupal.org/node/335711

sorry i have not read

xqi commented 19 November 2008 at 02:17

sorry i have not read carefully. i will try Wojtek's patch and let you guys know the results

it works great. i have also

xqi commented 19 November 2008 at 02:49

it works great.

i have also commented out the following line to make sure everyone else see the default language.

if ($language = language_from_browser()) {
// return $language;
}

to my opinion, this browser detection thing should be set as an option in administration. administrator should be able to turn it on or off.

------
http://www.northstarsoft.com

Solution: Administrator Language Module

Strompf commented 21 April 2010 at 08:40

Hi folks,

Although this thread is a bit old, I frequently came across this page, for having the same problem. The hack worked for me quit a while, but not anymore. To me, the Administratior Language module fixed it, without needing a hack.

Module's page: http://drupal.org/project/admin_language

Regards,
Jeroen Strompf
www.slowtraincoming.nl