Come together with the global Drupal community in Rotterdam, 28 Sept – 1 Oct 2026. Sessions, contribution, connection, and Early Bird savings until 8 June.About 3 years ago, before the release of Drupal 8.0.0 but apparently after some of the early non-English User Guide screenshots were created, a decision was made in Drupal Core to show English versions of configuration, rather than translated versions, on configuration overview pages, even if the page was being viewed in a non-English language. For example, if you go to admin/structure/menu or admin/structure/taxonomy, and you are viewing the site in Spanish, you will still see the built-in menu and taxonomy names and descriptions (such as Tags for taxonomy, and Main menu for menus) in English, and the rest of the page in Spanish.
The reason that decision was made (on issue #2136559: Config entity admin lists show configuration with overrides (eg. localized)) was because if you click Edit from one of those pages, you will be editing the English (un-translated) version of that item. You need to have the Configuration Translation module enabled, and click Translate, in order to edit the translated name/description. So, it would be very confusing to see text in Spanish, click Edit, and suddenly be seeing text in English. Note that there is currently a discussion going on in another Core issue, #2872646: Menu overview always shows the untranslated config entities, about reverting this behavior for a few screens, but I personally think it is unlikely to be changed, because of this confusion.
So... I think we need to address this in the User Guide, as follows:
a) Old screenshots in Catalan (one of the first non-English languages that I made screenshots for) and possibly other languages need to be updated to show the current state (with English on those pages). See also #2887495: Automated screenshots have English in them.
b) We need to explain, somewhere in the User Guide, about why these pages show English even when viewing the site in a non-English language. This will involve explaining that the base config is in English, that when you click Edit, you'll be editing the English version, and that to edit the non-English text (name, description, etc.), you need to have the Config Translation module enabled, and click Translate. I can think of two logical places to put this information:
https://www.drupal.org/docs/user_guide/en/understanding-data.html
https://www.drupal.org/docs/user_guide/en/language-concept.html
I kind of think it belongs on language-concept (because that is about translating and languages), but the problem is that is pretty late in the guide (in the Multilingual chapter). So... not sure what to do. Maybe we should move that concept to the Understanding Drupal chapter, since if your main language is not English (even if your site is not multilingual), you probably need to know about languages earlier in the Guide, including the content needed for this issue?
c) We need to reference this explanation on topics where English config would appear. So far, I have come across:
menu-reorder
structure-taxonomy-setup
structure-text-format-config
block-place [references the Powered by Drupal and Tools blocks, in Expand your Understanding, and these names will be shown in English]
views-duplicate [first screenshot]
| Comment | File | Size | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| #5 | 2959852-v1.patch | 9.34 KB | jhodgdon |
Comments
Comment #2
jhodgdonI guess the main point here is: Even in a one-language site, if the site language is not English, you still need to know about config translations fairly early in the site building process.
Comment #3
jhodgdonAdding additional pages that have English config showing to the summary.
Comment #4
jhodgdonHere is an initial patch -- please review! I've moved the language-concept topic into the Planning chapter (it depends on a concept topic that is already in that chapter), and added some text to that page to explain the idea. Then in the other topics mentioned in the issue summary, I added a sentence that refers to that topic for an explanation of why there is English text on those pages.
The next step will be to regenerate screenshots for these pages in Catalan and maybe Hungarian (which I think were initially generated before this change took place in Drupal Core), and check the other languages to verify that:
a) These pages show English in the screenshots as we expect
b) There isn't any other English in screenshots for guide translations
Comment #5
jhodgdonMight help if I actually uploaded the patch. :)
Comment #6
eojthebraveSuper nit-picky, but I think this should probably be themes, not theme. Later in the same paragraph you use themes plural.
Did you intend to put this note in parentheses, but not any of the others?
Otherwise, I like that you moved the introduction to languages and translation earlier in the guide. And this all makes sense to me.
Comment #7
jhodgdonRE #6 --
- Probably it should be themes plural everywhere, because you can get config from any of several themes and base themes that might be active on the site. Good catch. I'll update the patch later today... also need to get rolling on the screenshots...
- On the other pages, we're actually operating on the English text, such as clicking Edit on the Main navigation menu line. On the Taxonomy page, the Tags vocabulary is there but we're not operating on it. So, I thought it made sense to put the note in parens on the Taxonomy page (we note it but it's not so important for the task at hand), but not in parens on the other pages (it is important to the task at hand). Thoughts?
Comment #8
eojthebraveThat makes sense to me. I mostly wanted to confirm that it wasn't an oversight. Lets leave it as is.
Comment #9
jhodgdonGreat! I made the change from theme to themes as noted in #6 and committed this.
I still need to update a bunch of screenshots, so I'll just leave this at RTBC for the moment, and send out email to the translation teams about this change and also the screenshot updates that are coming.
Comment #11
jhodgdonI came across one more set of pages that needed this explanation: content types and fields provided by the installation profile are also shown in English. I went ahead and committed it, and will add a reply to the previous email to the translation group about it.
I'm also currently working on Catalan screenshots, to update for this issue, and will make a separate commit for each language as I go.
Comment #20
jhodgdonThe screenshot updates are done.
Farsi screenshots need some attention -- see #2904523: Create Persian/Farsi Screenshots -- but the others are looking good except for some Drupal Core issues that I added as Related to #2887495: Automated screenshots have English in them. If we're lucky, they might get fixed someday, but for now, I think the screenshots are a good representation of what a user will actually see. Which is the point.