CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I've been trying to figure out how to set up automated messages in multiple languages.

It seems the relevant columns of the civicrm_msg_template table aren’t multilingual, so for now you might need to code some logic that will use different templates depending on the locale.

Generally I couldn't find much help with getting the output of CiviCRM translated - so what's the usual procedure?

Most important right now is the automated email messages, but labels, strings, etc. would be interesting as well....

The general approach is that in the case of database-originating content the multilingual capabilities are provided by multiplying the relevant db columns and then using the column with suffix equal to the current locale (hence it won’t work directly for message templates, as the relevant columns are not multilingual).

When editing the db contents the user edits the columns matching their current locale.

maybe we'll submit some patches to fix that, I think it should really be part of the basic installation to have a fully multi-lingual setting.

That’s true – but message templates are fairly new addition to CiviCRM, and I general we try to multilingualise only things that are proven to be working fine (as multilingualisation adds a layer of complexity that sometimes makes it harder to track issues with the underlying feature).

Your patches will be most welcome; in general, you need to add <localizable>true</localizable> to the XML schema of the civicrm_msg_template table, regen the structure, test it throughly and finally make sure an upgrade from 3.2 works.

If we change the xml schema for civicrm_msg_template to make the following fields internationalizable, and then regenerate the DAO for it, would that allow us to perhaps have the ability to edit these fields with the built-in localization tools, and have multilingual messages go out?

`msg_subject` text COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci COMMENT 'Subject for email message.',
  `msg_text` text COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci COMMENT 'Text formatted message',
  `msg_html` text COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci COMMENT 'HTML formatted message',

As we are interested in making the language of the message sent vary by language preference of the user, we would have to hook in to where the message is generated from the templates to enable this.

Any comments or feedback on this approach?