¿Drupal en español?

Submitted by NonProfit on June 19, 2008 - 11:15am.

All About Drupal

Hey, this morning I met with three pastors who want to create a region-wide Drupal site which networks area pastors/church leaders. Making the site available to Spanish speaking individuals is a high priority. If anyone has used Internationalization, Localization client, String Overrides, or other modules which might be appropriate, please let me know. It otherwise looks to be a fairly straightforward project; with a calendar of events, photo/video, and ways to highlight/honor people or ministries. The hope is to network 600-800 churches, with sub-sites broken down by geographic region. I'm stoked, but this site is really low budget and I can't put a month+ into it. All input on how to cut down the development time, add features that would benefit such a site, or words of wisdom for larger-scale sites would be greatly appreciated. Blessings! -NP

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Straight Forward

Submitted by Matt Farina on June 19, 2008 - 3:23pm.

If you have some time to build it I'd suggest going with drupal 6. Internationalization jumped by leaps and bounds in it. Installing drupal in español with the interface translated should be a breeze.

Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.mattfarina.com

On the fly translation?

Submitted by NonProfit on June 19, 2008 - 3:55pm.

Thanks for the tip, Matt.

Is there anything that will translate node content on the fly; perhaps something similar to Babel Fish?

Blessings!

-NP

auto-translate services

Submitted by Josiah on June 19, 2008 - 5:37pm.

Any time I've been on the receiving end of various translation services, I've been frustrated. There is no replacing someone who knows the language, especially when you are talking about specific topics like technology or theology.

In the way of an explanation, I was once helping a guy with networking problems. When I arrived, it turned out his computer was in Korean. I was able to help, but not until after I realized that his translation 'realm' meant domain and other similar things like that.

Here's my quandary

Submitted by NonProfit on June 20, 2008 - 12:18am.

Hey Josiah,

Thanks for your input. Here's my quandary...how can a dual-language site best unite it's users? Do I simply rely on site admins to translate key content? Photos are language independent and could be easily shared...How do I best leverage Drupal to assist in minimizing the language barrier?

Blessings!

-NP

Language is a barrier

Submitted by Matt Farina on June 20, 2008 - 7:16am.

Going back to my trusty old bible stories, language is meant to be a sort of barrier to people and it was setup the way by God. Languages don't translate nicely from one to another with their own grammar rules, sentence structure, and just the way words happen.

Babel fish and other automated service like that are not that great. They can get the job done well enough that most of the time the point can be gotten.

At this point, I think you need people to be a go between for the language barrier.

D6 would let you have urls like example.com/en/mypage and example.com/es/mypage where they are translations of each other. If you have more than one language pack installed D6 can detect your browser settings and give you the right language. This is a start.

Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.mattfarina.com

I agree with Matt. I think

Submitted by Josiah on June 27, 2008 - 11:15pm.

I agree with Matt. I think this is one area you just can't replace a human with a computer. You're going to have to recognize the challenge and mobilize people to make up for it, or develop the community as two separate communities with people who serve both communities by posting translated content. It probably isn't realistic (awesome if it is) to expect your comments and less formal content to ever get translated. This means, the communities can't unite. Even if you could translate that fully, the translations lose a significant amount of the unity and flow of a good conversation.

Love thy neighbor's auto-translation

Submitted by NonProfit on June 28, 2008 - 12:23am.

Hey Josiah,

Thanks for your reply. I was talking with another Drupal developer regarding Internationalization and he was first leery of the content translation feature. Then he hit on what I see as a really important distinction. The primary content I want to translate are short descriptions of upcoming events. By nature they are temporary content. If the translation gets a little wonky at times, (and I'll likely have some sort of "report this" flag) then so be it.

Let's assume there are 700 churches in the region. If 15% post four events a week. That's 60 posts a day. I'm quite certain there is no hope of finding volunteers to translate that much content. So the issue isn't human vs. computer...it's computer vs. nothing. (And we've all been not communicating for too long.) I want to give auto-translate a shot at bringing us just a little closer together. I'll insist all of the paragraph-style writing be translated by a real person. We'll see how it goes...

Blessings!

-NP