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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Well, tri-lingual to be precise but you get the
idea. I am trying to put together an Italian/English/Spanish site and I'm about
95% there. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>But there seem to be some real problems and I thought I would come to the
all-wise Drupal mailing list to see if I could get some help with at least a few
of them.</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I have put together a short list of the strings
that are still causing me problems - things I don't know how to translate.
I've also added a few possible solutions, ideas I've had for each. Any help
given on this subject will be much appreciated.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>1. Logo in English: we have a logo with an English
tagline.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Solution: Drop the tagline from the
logo</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Solution: work out how to do conditional statements
with the main site logo in drupal.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Solution: leave at it is. It's only a tagline,
afterall!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>2. Pre-fill "enter keyword here" in search box. In
our search box, we have this entered by default in the text box using
Javascript:</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV align=left><FONT face="Courier New"><input type="text"
id="indexsearch_box" name="search" value="enter keyword here"
onFocus="this.className='active'; if(this.value=='enter keyword
here')this.value='';" onblur="if(this.value=='')this.value='enter keyword
here';this.className='passive';"></FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Solution: drop it completely. How important is
it?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Solution: Try to find a way of doing php
conditional statements with the javascript that is producing this. Not
optimistic about that.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Solution: Leave as it is.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>3. Contact form dropdown. We use the site-wide
contact form and on that page, there is a Category dropdown for people to
specify what they are writing about. These are not translatable, it
seems.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Solution: lose the category dropdown. How important
is it really? We could theoretically select to have different
categories of mail go to different addresses but are we really going to do that?
We already have the subject text field. That suffices, I think.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Solution: different contact forms for different
languages. This is a realistic possibility. Others have done it. It requires
making new forms from cck, but the problem is that you need to make a
submittable form, which is not as simple as making a static content type. How
hard is this to do? I have seen others suggesting using ONE other type of
contact form for another language...we may end up with 5-6 other languages so we
need an expandable solution.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Solution: Leave as it is - I think this is a little
bit too much English for an Spanish/Italian user though and looks
"ugly".</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Solution: send Italian users, for example, who
click the footer link to an Italian contact page (simple enough, we already use
conditional php for our menus to alter link text and URL destinations) where you
just have a simple mailto link. Cheap and cheerful. It's the cheap version of
solution 2.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>4. CCK dropdowns. Most of our CCK fields
are location-based dropdowns (in profile) or empty fields for text to be
submitted in. The labels are translatable....Nationality, Address, Age, etc. The
problems come from fields where we have entered "Allowed Values" which
can't be translated. For example, we have a CCK field in our nodeprofile
"Hobbies" where we have a dropdown list with 20 hobbies that users can select
multiple items from.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>What solutions exist for CCK field allowed values?
We could turn them all into free form text fields but then we lose control over
the imputted values totally.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>5. Forum descriptions and container names. We
have a container called "Regions" which we can't translate. We have other
regions called "Site Information" and "Site Help" which seem again
untranslatable. Worse, we have forums whose descriptions read something like
"Post here to ask questions relating to Central America". How can this be
translated?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0px">
<DIV class=description><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV class=description><FONT face=Arial size=2>Solution: drop the descriptions.
Forum titles make it obvious what goes where. This is not really true and
there'll be confusion.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=description><FONT face=Arial size=2>Solution: put short, succint
descriptions. Trim down the fat from sentences. "Central America Forum" is
better. But what about descriptions of other general forums such as
"Requests for help. Unsure how to do something? Ask your questions here." They
can't be simplified.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=description><FONT face=Arial size=2>Solution: the forum link for
Spanish and Italian speakers can be changed. They could be sent directly to
their own forums, which will exist.</FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2> They
would still have the breadcrumb links to be able to navigate up to the top level
but it's a better solution. Even more, we can give them their own sub-forums for
Help, Suggestions, etc just as there are for English speakers. Italians and
Spanish speakers would quickly learn that the main Forum link brought them
to "their" forum area even though English speaking forums existed.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=description><FONT face=Arial size=2>Solution: is there any way to
hack forum.module to get forum descriptions wrapped in t strings or is this a
big no no?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=description> </DIV>
<DIV class=description>Once again, thanks for any assistance that you can give
me on these issues.</DIV>
<DIV class=description> </DIV>
<DIV class=description>Neil</DIV></DIV></DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>