mod_translation
This module provides support for dealing with multiple languages.
How content and static strings are translated is explained in full in Translation.
Language as part of the URL
By default, mod_translation prefixes each URL (using URL rewriting) in your website with the code of the current language. The idea behind this is that each language version of a resource gets its own URL, and is as such indexable for Google.
This behaviour is enabled by default, but can be switched off in the admin, by going to Structure, Translation. There is a checkbox labelled “Show the language in the URL”.
Alternatively you can set the config key mod_translation.rewrite_url to false.
Default language fallback
By default, the site default language is added as the first fallback after the selected languages. This makes
untranslated content use the site default language before other fallback languages are tried. Set
i18n.default_language_is_fallback to false to keep the fallback language order based only on the selected request
language and the previous context language fallbacks.
This can be changed in the admin by going to Structure, Translation. There is a checkbox labelled “Use the default language for untranslated texts”.
Programmatically switching languages
In a template, you can use mod_translation’s postback hook to switch between languages:
{% button text="Dutch" postback={set_language code="nl"} delegate=`mod_translation` %}
Creates a button which switches to Dutch. And another one for english:
{% button text="English" postback={set_language code="en"} delegate=`mod_translation` %}
Supporting right-to-left languages
For basic use you don’t need to do anything. Zotonic base site adds a lang attribute to the html tag, and when a
right-to-left language is selected (for instance Arabic), the browser will interpret lang="ar" and automatically
adapt the content to right-to-left.
Custom right-to-left content
If you write your own templates, you can add the lang tag in the html or body tag, for instance:
<body {% include "_language_attrs.tpl" id=id %} >
This will generate the following, when Zotonic selected Arabic for the page with id id:
<body xml:lang="ar" lang="ar" dir="rtl" class="rtl">
When you want to add an extra class added to the rtl or ltr class you can use:
<body {% include "_language_attrs.tpl" id=id class="my-body-class" %} >
To create individual right-to-left elements, you can use the same principle:
<div {% include "_language_attrs.tpl" %}></div>
And when you want to force a specific language:
<div {% include "_language_attrs.tpl" language=`en` %} >This is English content</div>
Accepted Events
This module handles the following notifier callbacks:
observe_admin_menu: Add translation and language administration entries to the admin menu.observe_dispatch_rewrite: Removes the language from the path parts and sets it as the page language.observe_language_detect: Detect the preferred request language from URL, user context, and request headers.observe_request_context: Check if the user has a preferred language (in the user's config) usingz_context:get_cookie.observe_scomp_script_render: Add translation runtime variables to rendered client-side script blocks.observe_set_user_language: Persist a user language change to the authenticated user profile when allowed.observe_url_rewrite: Rewrite URLs to include/remove language prefixes according to translation settings.observe_user_context: Set user context language/timezone defaults based on the user profile resource.
Delegate callbacks:
event/2withpostbackmessages:language_default,language_delete,language_status,set_language,toggle_url_rewrite,translation_generate,translation_reload.event/2withsubmitmessages:language_add,language_list.