CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I like to take up a thread from  dkoffler: Using CiviCRM in a multilingual environment « on: February 25, 2008, 09:05:42 pm »

Switzerland, Mountains and languages
In Switzerland I am used to buy my food having at least three languages describing the product and we even speak a language we do not write That led in myCMS to the concept of the dialog language for the homepage management which the user can select on a session basis.  With this the user  chooses his language for dialog and help. The whole logic of functions   stays in English. Where strings need to come from the database they have a language attribute to return the proper language text.
Multilingual CMS
Consequently my CMS has the possibility to run different language trees within one homepage. No attempt is made to autotranslate pages. The language trees do not have and do not need the have completely identical contents.
Where form entry is needed, description and help texts come from the database. The language of the page tree calls the proper language texts.
The data in the database has a language attribute but no attempt is made to auto translate it. With this a flyer of an event can have versions in more than one language. Every language tree will offer for download the corresponding flyer.

Applying this experience to Civicrm
I would like to see the following direction of development:
1) I consider civicrm great in terms of an online management tool: Event management, member management, contribution management, mailing management. With a multilingual dialog this would make it a perfect tool.
2) As a GUI for the web visitor it is not really what I would look for. To my understanding such a goal would be clearly impossible. Providing a framework to help writing  your own dialog but use the database handling of civicrm, would yield a good user presentation and a perfect management in the backoffice. Here language will be handled by the implementator of the user GUI. For him the effort to make it multilingual is easier to achieve because he can restrict hinself to the limited scope of his application.
As an example take event registration. The present quality of the GUI ia not up to standard neither in the layout nor in the simplicity and ease of use for the user. I intend to rewrite this along the line I mentioned above.

Conclusion
In conclusion I would like to see the user dialog consistently multilingual, preferrably session based.  It would make the initial learning curve for the webadmin or web programmer less steep as he would just keep to English until all works as it should. In the end he could just switch over to the language he needs, als language would not interfere with logic (smarty does the same to separate presentation from business logic.

Provide a framework where the web user interface can be written with easy integration of the civicrm backend.

I’m not sure whether the above is a question or a plan of some sort. Note that as of CiviCRM 2.1, multi-language support (with some caveats) was introduced; you can read more about the details in my CiviCRM blog entries.

It is a request for development direction. I am interested to be able to apply it lin my homepages.

sawjer

I’m not sure whether the above is a question or a plan of some sort. Note that as of CiviCRM 2.1, multi-language support (with some caveats) was introduced; you can read more about the details in my CiviCRM blog entries.

Hallo Piotr

This is sort of a request, linked with an idea of solution.  As I am personally forced to find a solution to the problem in my application using civicrm, I am willing to contribute code. However I need to more clearly understand the implications and constraints.

Sawjer

Ok, so try out the current multi-language capabilities of CiviCRM, see how we handle them and feel free to ask me any specific questions you may have.

Thank you pjotr

I have switched to multilanguage on my test system but I find no Button to select language. Am I blind or do I just not know what to look for?
Help is apreciated

Piotr - Sawjer is running standalone. How are we handling the language switcher block for that mode?

I followed this thread and I do see a language selector in the back end, but I need to be able to flip between languages in the front end.  See www.HispanicCanadian.org.  The rest of the Joomla site is using Joomla 1.5.7 and JoomFish for switching.  When I flip to Spanish, the CiviCRM membership signup page doesn't switch.

Did the preceeding thread suggest only back-end elements or am I missing something for the front end?

Ultimately, I would like to be able to allow the front-end user to select their language.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Matthew