Content localization in Drupal : localizer module

Do you have any features connected with Views module? I mainly mean adding new filter for language content? And even better setting one view with many languages (for different titles for example).

I have very specific requirements for my site and i18n module does not fill my needs.

Manveru

I have just ben testing your module (version 0.0.6 - 2006-10-13), and I think you have to correct something really important.

When you create a node with (let's say) 2 translations, in the node listings 3 copies of the node appear (one for the original, and one for each translation). This is happening because there are three nodes in the database, and any language-unaware query would return all of them.

You should implement hook_db_rewrite_sql, so other queries in all other drupal modules are aware of the language, and just get the nids for the right one (take a look at i18n_db_rewrite_sql()), instead of patching other modules...

For example, in your localizernews module, you would just have to call db_rewrite_sql($sql) instead of that if statement when building the query. By the way, IMO you should remove that news module from the package, as it has nothing to do with localization...

Sergio Caridad - www.artefantastico.com

Still testing.

I have found that the alias translation problem (i.e. different aliases for each language, for the same node e.g. english: start, spanish: inicio) doesn't work either.
The problem is when you are viewing a node, and switch language, the node switches correctly, but the url stays the same. This will lead to SEO problems, as the same URL will be indexed with different contents. If you try to avoid this by using lang-prepended aliases (e.g. es/inicio - en/start) the language switching does not work.

In my opinion, the main problems with i18n were:
- menu translation (fixed in localizer, also fixed in i18n, I think)
- alias translation (not fixed in localizer either)
- duplicate content (not fixed in localizer either)
- taxonomy duplication (not tried in localizer yet, seems to be fixed)

I think i18n needs a rework, but I think localizer isn't fixing its main problems...

Sergio Caridad - www.artefantastico.com

I've just installed this module to compare with i18n. I haven't used either modules before so as well as Drupal so I'm pretty new to this. I've used MDPro for bi/multi-lingual content sites till now which has core support for that.

What pros/cons does Localizer have compared with i18n? I know it doesn't require patching the core modules. What's more?

Just played abit with Localizer and when I created content I found this:
I want to run an English/Chinese(Simpl) website. Now when I create content for example in English and I don't create a translation for it in Chinese it will only show when you've selected English as Language. I would like to have it show the English entry for it if there's no Chinese entry (and vice versa).
Is this possible already and if not will you make this possible in near future? Maybe with the non-translated entry add a small note that the entry hasn't been translated(yet)

I just installed localizer to give it a try (It has quite a reputation out there) but then had to deactivate it again for some reason (which is not important to the problem).

I'm using drupal-4.7.4 and mysql v 14.7 dist 4.1.11
After installing, activating and deactivating localizer
I encountered the following error when trying to access my blog-node:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: localizer_supported_languages() in /home/path/to/mydrupal/sites/default/modules/localizer/modules/blog.module on line 137

Why doesn't the localizer module replace its versions of blog/taxonomy/poll with their original versions when it is deactivated?

Any hint on how to get my non-localizer version back up and running again?

Thanks a lot
Stefan

Hi Roberto,

Thanks for your quick reply!

Unfortunately, this doesn't help at all, on the contrary.
When I move away (or delete) the localizer-subdir my whole site
does not show any article anymore, since the localizer also changes
the taxonomy-module and doesn't deregister this (i.e. let drupal use
the version in the localizer-subdir instead of the original version) either.
Thus drupal is totally messed up because it can not find the taxanomy-module
because the localizer-folder doesn't exist any more.

Do I really have to locate the corresponding entries
(on which xyz.module drupal should use) and correct them manually?

Thanks again!
Stefan

I know you're busy working on the initial development of this module for 4.7.x
But do you have a planning in mind for porting it over to Drupal 5?
I am testing 5 Beta 2 right now in a development environment and it's very stable (as far beta's can be) so far. Localizer is my choice for content localisation right now and one for Drupal 5.x is of course very important. I don't know how much changes this would be needed to port it to 5.x since I haven't looked into the Dev Doc for 5.x

First of all thanks Robert for all the work and the great module so far.

I'm having problems when using this module with front_page however, I wondered if anyone could help.

Front_page setup:

Basically I have one front page set up in the front_page module for all anonymous users.

All authenticated users get redirected to the default front page: www.example.com/node

Localizer setup:

I have 2 languages English and Japanese and the language switch block set up.

Problem:

When I try to switch languages on the front page as an authenticated user, the page reloads but nothing happens. If I then navigate to another page, I see that the language has been changed now. If I switch languages on a page other than the front page and then try to navigate back to the front page, I can't.

When I have www.example.com/node/1 set up as the redirect front page for authenticated users, the behavior is a little different but still strange. Navigation is translated but the language switch block is not updated (the language option doesn't change)

Solution:

?? I guess the problem is with the redirect function. Is there anyway to use this with the localizer module?

Thanks!

hello.

in the i18n module, there's a feature that lets you translate site-wide variables like site_name, site_slogon, etc. is this doable with the localizer module? and if so how?

Hi Roberto, nice Work!!! Currently, Im working in a site with a links directory, with a lot of sites in it, so imagine how helpful your module is for me! I dont have to type tons of redirects url's...
But I have one problem... I am making mi directory using the category module. So the structure is something like this:

Paises (Container)
--España (category)
----Link 1 (weblink)
----Link 2 (weblink)
--Italia (category)
----Link 1 (weblink)
--Francia (category)

and so on. The problem is that when I made the translation, it end up like this:

Paises (container)
--country (container)
--España (category)
----Link 1 (weblink)
----Link 2 (weblink)
--Spain (category)
--Italia (category)
----Link 1 (weblink)
--Italy (category)
--Francia (category)
--France (category)

In another words, it duplicates the content, and both categories (spanish and english) are show no matter what is the language select (something not good!).
So, what im doing wrong? Can this problem be fixed?.
Besides that, if I can help you in any way (besides beta-testing), please let me know...
Thanks!

Hi,
is there a way to avoid node duplication when translating a node? I've build a custom node type with fields such us date, price that are not meant to be translated. The problem is, they can be translated - as every version of the node stores its values for date and price. I've tried to separated fields into a table and inner join them on a value of localizer pid but, the problem is I cannot figure out node's pid value when inserting a new node, nor can i find it inside hook_load() (as these assigment probably happen after the node load/insertion..) Man this gives me headache.

When will you release a dev version for Drupal 5 since RC1 of Drupal 5 has been released.
I want to drop 4.7.x and just start with 5.x as the Dev Teams are working very hard, didn't expect a RC so soon...

Hello Roberto, congratulations for your great effort in the Localizer module development!

I installed Drupal 4.7.4 for the first time some weeks ago. I tried to learn quickly trying lots of contributed modules. As localization is one of my main concerns, I installed Localizer 2.1 (I rececenly updated to 2.3).

I think that Localizer is much more powerful than the i18n module in management capabilities. I successfuly translated menus, static pages and taxonomy queries like http://localhost/drupal4/?q=taxonomy/term/11. My problem is that I can not get the terms in the vocabularies translated; they are always shown in English. I suppose they are meant to show translated in the teaser view, the body details view and the create new content page, aren't they?

I applied the patches taxonomy.patch and menu.patch. I checked that all these modules are active: locale, localizer, localizermenu, localizernode, localizertaxonomy, taxonomy. I uninstalled and physically removed the following modules which caused problems: i18n, taxonomybrowser, taxonomymenu. Furthermore, when I query the table localizertranslation I can see the term translations and the value in the object_key field seems correct. What else can I check?

Some help would be appreciated. Best regards.

Hi Roberto,

I've been pulling my hairs out for the last few months trying to get i18n to work. While I got it more or less working, i18n still causes lots of little bugs through its internal path translation. For example, it causes some login and logout issues (but only on IE6/7, and only on my webhost, not on my local wamp test install).

Just had another look at localizer and was impressed how much it has evolved recently. Great work. I'm ready to dump i18n. However, I absolutely cannot see how I could work around the views support that i18n provides.
I use panels to contain several views, and they all display the correct localized content. The language of the panel is determined by the url. How would this work in localizer?
To be more specific, I have a list of nodes (such as in a view or forum) and only want to display the ones in the current language. Is this possible in localizer, or should I wait for proper views support?

Best regards and thanks again for your initiative,
Bodo

Thank you for your superb work!

I downloaded Localizer 4.7.x-2.4 just to look at the instructions to do an upgrade for my test site that is already using one previous version of Localizer. (Not quite ready to jump into the upgrade yet. Besides, I see you have Views support almost ready. I may just wait a bit!)
In the README file under Upgrade, there were two items that I did not quite understand.

 Rename you 'localizer' table to 'localizernode'.
To use you previous translated strings for menu and taxonomy, proper SQL
instructions should be created. 

Is the "table" you are referring to a table in the database? If so, can I just rename this using phpmyadmin?
Is the second part saying that to avoid re-translating menu and taxonomy items, one must manually do some SQL instructions to get them back?

Also, one question not related to the above, normally when a drupal module is updated, we need to run the update.php script. I assume this is true for this new version of Localizer as well?

I'm brand new to drupal and could do with a bit of hand holding if someone has the time. I've installed D5 and the localizer module and after reading up on localizer I'm still don't know how to use it. Is there a tutorial out there that explain the basics? I'm just after a high level how to create a page in english and french and have a way to switch the site menu from one language to the other and have the page available.

Thanks very much
Lee

Hi!

I'm pretty new to localizer module (and also drupal), so I think the problem is 'me', but I faced some problems:

I do the following on a new site:

Administer->Site Building->Menus.
Enable Contact and Forum.

Edit both: (Translate them to another language), and select the parent item to "Primary Links".
Submit.
The two "buttons" appears on the top, and now comes the problem.

If I change the language (with the language selection), it changes the language of every item except the buttons of the primary links!

Do I miss something?

Thanks in advance,
Zsoca-M5

Freshly installed Drupal 5 and downloaded the Localizer version "5.x-1.x-dev 2007-Jan-24"
After installing it's all fine, but when I enable the localizer.block module it breaks the blocks and gives me the following warning:

"user warning: Unknown column 'n.nid' in 'on clause' query: SELECT DISTINCT b.* FROM blocks b LEFT JOIN blocks_roles r ON b.module = r.module AND b.delta = r.delta LEFT JOIN localizernode loc ON loc.nid=n.nid WHERE (loc.locale IN ('','-') OR loc.locale IS NULL) AND ( b.theme = 'garland' AND b.status = 1 AND (r.rid IN (2) OR r.rid IS NULL) ) ORDER BY b.region, b.weight, b.module in /www/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 167."

It's a clean install and I used the patched files that came in the tar.

EDIT: Been fixed with patched files issued by Roberto.

I thought I had this module figured out, but I now I'm hopelessly confused about the correct way to enter menus and content (pages, stories).

Can you confirm where the mistake is in this process:

1. Add menu
2. Enter Title ("Cars")
3. Expand 'Translations' and enter title in English ("Cars") and French ("Autos")
4. Submit
5. Click Blocks
6. Change setting of 'Cars' to 'left sidebar' so it will become visible once I assign stories/pages to it
7. Click Create content
8. Click Story
9. Keep Locale set to English
10. In Menu settings, enter Tires in title box; select Cars from Parent item drop-down
11. Submit
12. [The menu title Cars now appears in the left sidebar with the bulleted item Tires underneath]
13. Click Translations
14. Click Create translation
15. [The UI sidebars stay English, by the way]
16. Keep locale set to French
17. Change Title and Body content as desired
18. In Menu settings, enter Pneus in the title box
19. [Here is where I think something has gone wrong... why isn't Autos visible?]
20. In the Parent item drop-down, the French menu item "Autos" is not visible... only the English menu names are visible.
21. So, I leave 'Navigation' as the selected Parent item drop-down
22. Submit
23. Go to front page by clicking logo

Now, when I click the English button to view my site in English, I see the menu "Cars" and the story "Tires" in the left sidebar. But then I click the French button and I see the same exact thing! Not good.

24. From English site, click Tires
25. Click Edit
26. Scroll to the Menu settings and click a *new* link that wasn't there before called 'edit the advanced settings'
27. Expand the Translations links and enter into English title the following: Tires-advancedmenu
28. Enter into French title the following: Pneus-advancedmenu
29. [I don't touch the path, which is node/43 by the way]
30. [Also, I don't touch the Parent item, which is Cars]
31. Submit
32. Go to front page

Now, when I click the English button, the left sidebar menu says 'Cars' and the item below is 'Tires-advancedmenu' (which is node/43). When I click the French button, the menu says 'Cars' (which is still English) but at least now the item below says 'Pneus-advancedmenu' (which is node/44).

The links works perfectly and I see the correct info on those pages. Great! Buy why isn't the menu title appearing correctly? Let's go back Administer - Menus and try to figure it out.

From the Menu -- List, the menu title 'Cars' and item 'Tires' appears regardless of whether I view the page in English or French.

From the English display of Menu -- List

33. Click Edit (under Cars)
34. Expand the translation titles
35. Enter in English title: Cars (translationmenu)
36. Enter in French title: Autos (translationmenu)
37. Submit
38. Go to front page

Now, when I click the English button, the left sidebar menu says 'Cars (translationmenu)' and the item below is still 'Tires-advancedmenu' (which is node/43). When I click the French button, the menu says 'Autos (advancedmenu)' and the item below still says 'Tires-advancedmenu' (which is node/44).

So, it now appears to work. I get the results I wanted. But I have several questions:

1. Why isn't the 'edit the advanced settings' visible when creating the text in the first place?
2. When I first create the menu and specific the languages (from the expand section), why doesn't the system remember this... I am forced to re-enter after creating my first pages (stories).
3. Is something wrong with my installation of this? Is it supposed to work this way?

Hi there,

I am wondering how I could create multilingual content. With the menu entries it works, i click advanced settings and have some entry forms for all my languages then. But when editing the content itself I have a small dropdown list for the settings, that doesn't seem to do anything. It's no javascript attached to change the boxes on the fly and when I save with lang1 selected once and then with lang2 selected the second it's always only the last saved version available. I am changing the language with manually placed index.php?locale=my links atm, but with the official locale switcher block its been the same.

Hello Roberto

I would like to install localizer as my primary links for a bilingual Spanish/English site isn't working (www.cumbredemigrantes.org) and would like to make the site more fully bilingual (we are having a formal event where actually a lot of latin american migrant leaders living in Italy are coming actually)

Anyway as a newbee - do you think I can do it? I also have set up a number of forums that are classified as spanish or english forums under the i18 module. How does your module work with the forums.

I ask because I am about to put a lot of content up so I want to install it before so I have a good multilingual site going but I don't have the skills to spend more than a couple days trying to fingure outall the kinks. I was going to try it today and tomorrow - no chance you'll be around if I have problems?

Mary Beth

Great module ... thanks for it. Really great work.

I have small trouble with taxonomy term (all other things work perfectly).

1. I've created new menu and it translation - works perfectry
2. I've created a new Page and it translation and assigned its menu to the new nenu (then i've made translation on the nemu settings page) - works perfectry
3. I've created new vocabulary called AAA and new term called BBB (and i've translated this term for examplle to CCC)
4. I've created the submenu called "LANG1" and translated it to "LANG2" and assigned it to BBB term ("taxonomy/term/4")
6. i've created another page called TEST1 in one language and TEST2 in another and assigned it to term BBB

My situation:

When i shitch language all menu have correct titles. When i click LANG1(LANG2) item in the menu i see TEST1 article in one language and TEST2 article in another. BUT I ALWAYS SEE BBB TITLE OF THE TERM. AND EXPECT TO SEE CCC. what i am doing wrong?

i am newbee to drupal probably there is the solution sonewhere in this thread by i did'n find it.

My system DRUPAL 5.1 + localizer-5.x-1.7.tar.gz + XaMpp

Hi,

Forget about this message. I got a bit panicked because I had a total mess in my translation to be shown, was kinda mixed up everything.

But one question I have, why can't I translate module strings like 'Select content languages' it won't show up in the manage strings search.

Thank you very much for your help. And keep up the great work.

Mario

How about listing the available languages as categories for the blog?
A kind of fake categories so to speak.

The reason is that I'd like to specify language in a blogg post. Or are there a better way, which probably will work with common desktop blogg software?

/Jonas
www.joyofbits.se

Hi drupalist fellow..

How to detect which language is used by a certain node?

Thanks in advance,

--
Nano Surbakti

Hi Roberto,
I'm receiving a fatal error when I click on 'new translation'.

this is the error I get:
Fatal error: Cannot use object of type stdClass as array in /var/www/html/gospelmessengers/modules/localizer/localizer.module on line 1215

I just downloaded the latest localizer ( localizer 5.x-1.8 )
I would love to find out how to fix this, thanks!

hi there,

first of all, tnx for the great module. i'm using drupal 5.1 and i _was_ using localizer 1.7, but have since updated to 1.9 to try to fix this problem. however, i'm still having the same problem, so i thought i'd post here to see if anyone can help. i've searched the site and cannot find anyone with the same problem.

i have experienced no problems except for the localizer block. i create one block with the locale 'french' and another with the locale 'english' and place them both in the right sidebar. when i view them on the site, however, i can see them both on the english and french versions of the site. so it's as if there is no localizer at all on the blocks. the localizer blocks module is enabled and i'm not getting any errors.

can someone please help? i'm hoping this is a very simple (human error?) problem...

thanks in advance,
meg
:)

thanks, edinjapan, i will follow the conversation over there! :)

As everyone says, Localizer Module is very powerful!
But how can I change a theme when user changes the site language from Localizer Block?

For example for English & Italian site uses "GARLAND" theme and for Persian site uses "GARLAD_RTL" theme.
How can Localizer switch between themes in different languages?
I couldn’t find a way to do that!

I have localizer install fine, but when I try to translate my menu items, they change randomly from one language to the other. More than once, I've thought I had it fixed for one and gone on to the next, only to have the previous one break again. The nodes themselves are consistently wrong, no matter how many times I try to change them.

just subscribing

this module has no support anymore.

Hello,

I've been trying to fix this problem for some time now and I think I'm finally on the right track. Since ever I installed update status module, I received a blank white page anytime I was trying to access any of the admin pages (I had posted a thread about this issue here: http://drupal.org/node/662974). Well now, i finally figured out how to turn on the error messages and although I still don't receive any errors on the blank page appearing, I receive this error message when trying to access settings.php:

Warning: include_once(sites/all/modules/localizer/localizer_settings.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in .../sites/default/settings.php on line 167 Warning: include_once(): Failed opening 'sites/all/modules/localizer/localizer_settings.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/hsphere/shared/apache/libexec/php5ext/php/') in ...sites/default/settings.php on line 167

So i suppose, the problem is the localizer module? I tried commenting out the last line (line 167) in my settings.php file, but this doesn't do the trick and now I want to uninstall the localizer module, but I can not do it the regular way, because I can't access my admin pages and i don't only want to delete the localizer folder... I doubt that this would be the proper way to approach this issue, so i would like to turn the module off in the database, but am lost about how to do this; i've seen three tables concerning the localizer module. could anybody please help me out fix this issue?

Thank you in advance,

Karinha