Creating a multilingual website is the core aim of many business owners as they want to target the market that is still untouched and generate higher revenues. And to aim the local market of any area, it is vital to have the website presented in a local language. Drupal 8 is a popular CMS and comes with excellent translation functions and offers modules that help to set up a multilingual site easily.
Initially, it may appear to you as something that is very easy, but once you start asking questions about multilingual website, you would be surprised about the varied factors that you need to consider to handle everything smoothly. Here in this article, we will discuss some important tips to manage your multilingual website in Drupal 8.
Check The Things That Can Be Translated On Your Website:
Understanding the things that can be translated in Drupal 8 for your multilingual site will help you to create the perfect design and develop the right solution. Drupal offers three different types of information that can be translated.
• Interface Translation: This feature is provided by Drupal for front and backend of the website and the interface translation module downloads the translations when the addition of a new language is done.
Even if the translation is done, there is a possibility that they don’t match the requirements of the site. To solve this issue, a user interface is offered for customizing the translations, which are constantly updated by the module from various sources of the community.
• Content Translation: The content can also be translated to different languages with the content translation module. This functionality can be accessed within the fields as well as on the level of the field. Every content item contains the translate tab and it is used for translating the item.
• Configuration Translation: This is very important as it manages the configuration of the various views, forms, fields, content types and other items. It also has a user interface that is provided for managing the translation of all these items.
Manual or Automated Translation:
Translating the web content for multilingual Drupal sites is a daunting task as it is both time and resource consuming. To solve this issue, you can consider adding a website translation tool that can translate all the pages automatically in the Drupal CMS.
The automated tools can handle any number of pages with efficiency so it is recommended to use these tools as compared to the manual translation.
Multilingual Workflows:
To keep your website content updated in all languages, you can now set up workflows in Drupal 8. You can easily automate the review of the translated content to your reviewers, but make sure that they don’t consider the reviewer’s language scope.
Once the content is sent for translations, there is still a chance that it can be modified in Drupal 8. In this case, the translation will be done on the original version prior to the changes made by the editor.
In-Site Search Options:
It is very important to offer your visitors to carry out a proper search through the different languages that are available in the site. You also need to consider if transliteration is important for your in-site search for Drupal 8 website so that it supports queries with or without accents.
Localization and Internationalization:
You may have translated your site fully into all the relevant languages, but there are chances that it may not be enough. Localizing your content so that it can target your local audiences, keeping in mind the cultural preferences proves to be very effective.
Drupal also comes with built in internationalism features so that the site can adapt easily for different locales.