Thread

We’re making a quote for a client who would like to have his site in 3 main languages, but be able to add translations of content in up to around 20 languages.

It’s obviously not a good idea to have the teaser, title, url title and full text of an entry available in 20 custom fields for each language, this would mean close to 100 custom fields in the Publish form.

Is it possible to “dynamically” add a field? So, for example from a drop down select “add German translation” which would make the relevant textarea appear? If this field is completed we must be able to show on the front end that this translation is available and provide a link to it.

Can Fieldframe provide an interface to make life easier?

Does anyone have experience managing a whole bunch of languages and translations like this?

As you say - having 100 different options for this would be chaotic…
I would suggest going down a different path depending upon how quickly your translations arrive, are added, how complete they will be, etc…

1. MSM basically different site for different languages.

2. I would use something like Playa to create a relationship between two options. So for example…
Your prime language lets say english has the original content. At the base of this edit form you use the playa relationship fields for each languages alternative to select a different article.

Therefore, you have a different article for each language and on your main (english) language form you select an article for each language variant.

Other problems to consider though - URL’s in different languages, how you construct menu’s, how many pages and frequently changing the content is, etc.

Thanks for this info.

To make matters more complicated, we’ll be using MSM to create additional mini sites, so I’m not sure if using MSM also to set up the different language site is a good idea.

A scenario we’d face would be: a News item is published standard in 3 different languages (NL - DE - EN). At any time (so at creation via Publish or 6 months later via Edit), the client wants to be able to add a translation for any of the 15 extra languages he uses.

But the Publish form may also contain a custom field “documents”, where the clients wants to be able to upload just a .pdf in one of the 15 extra languages. So the field should be “doc_xx” where xx is one of those languages.

I’ve never seen Fieldframe in action but I like the idea of the Matrix, where managing so many custom fields may be easier and addable on the fly. Is this possible? I’m not sure if it will be very user friendly to paste in 100’s of words of text in such an interface?

you’ve lost me! i understand MSM issues and not going down that path…

Fieldframe - would in my opinion be a nightmare as your templates would have so many “if” statements chekcing if fields and languages exist etc, etc.

i personally think have a single article for your base language, and a different article for each language. Then linking the articles with a relationship field is the way to go.

But i don’t understand or know all your requirements or ideas on how to manage menu’s and SEF urls, etc.

It sounds like you need to consider the EE multi-lingual technique using language specific entries rather than multiple custom fields. Each entry’s language is set via a language category.

use of categories to achieve this is quite a nice idea too… i never seem to use categories enough!

Is there any info or guides available about the language category technique?

I can see how it would work: For every entry published you have to select a language category. To create a translation you just publish a new item, selecting the appropriate language category.

But if the titles and url titles are different (will be the case), how do you provide the link to say the FR version of a EN entry you are viewing? How does EE know the FR version is a translation of an EN item? Related entries (Playa)?

Is there any info or guides available about the language category technique?

I can see how it would work: For every entry published you have to select a language category. To create a translation you just publish a new item, selecting the appropriate language category.

Yes, that’s how it works, pretty straightforward. There should be no need for relationships.

This has been discussed a few times - here are some suggestions and a links to further posts on the subject.

But if the titles and url titles are different (will be the case), how do you provide the link to say the FR version of a EN entry you are viewing? How does EE know the FR version is a translation of an EN item? Related entries (Playa)?

Depends on your requirements, but selecting a particular language would be done either by a language specific domain, or using a language segment in the URL - domain.com/fr/ - the purpose being to determine a language ID which you can use in a weblog/channel tag.