Multilingual Drupal using the Localize Server

The Drupal Localize Server project show real promise in its quest to make Drupal a great platform for multilingual websites.

Before you had to download a language file for Drupal Core. Even though many modules come with language files, those translations aren't always complete and you have to wait for new releases to get updates.

To fill the gaps you have been forced to add the missing translations yourself. There are many modules for this, best start is the Internationalization module and some of the add on modules for it.

It will end up in quite a lot of work if there is a lot missing. Also you have to check each language when you update modules to make sure needed phrases are translated.

Drupal Localize Server

The localize server is aiming for separating the translations from the being managed with the code by putting them on a centralised server instead. The server scans each drupal.org hosted project (core, module, theme and install profiles)  and adds them to its database. It also manages versions of each project so you can access the correct translation for the version you have installed.

The server also presents statistics and other information so you easily see what state the language you use are in.

It also centralises the work on translations and there are teams for many languages working hard on completing the translations. Many groups, such as the Spanish translation group, has moved to use this server instead of maintaining a translation file.

You can of course also download the current translations and import them to your site. That is still a bit of a manual work though.

Localization Update

If you instead use the Localization Update module, you will be able to automate the whole process of updating the translations for you website.

Once installed it will automatically connect to the localize server and check if there are any updated translations for your website and the languages you have enabled.

Then you can simply select between a few options and it will download and import everything automatically.

Among the options are a setting to prevent updates of strings that has manually been translated on your site, thus it wont overwrite your translations.

It also hooks into the module management so that when you enable a new module, it will automatically check with the server if a more current translation is available compared to the one the module comes with.

Currently the module only exist in a dev version, but from the test I have done it works very well. The only problem I had was that a remaining dsm() in the module caused it to crash since I didn't have the devel module. Check this issue ticket for instructions on how to remove it.

What experiences do you have with multilingual websites based on Drupal?