Translation problems

[jozef]

Hi,
I am testing Elxis in quick and dirty way
- installed version 2006.4 on localhost WAMP
- installed czech language for frontend, czech is for version 2006.3
- created Autonomous page in czech language
- created Menu Item and coupled it with autonomous page created in previous page
- OK, in frontend i see a menu item and it works when i switch to czech
- in admin i added english for autonomous page and menu item
- Question 1: BUT HOW TO TRANSLATE CONTENT OF PAGE AND MENU ITEM from czech to english
- Question 2: When i want to translate some existing content item (not autonomous page), e.g. "Welcome to Elxis", i see no option for "from English to Czech"

Thanks
Jozef

[eliasan]

Hi jozef,

I will try to answer your questions, although I am not sure that I unterstood them.

Lets say that you want to have an English and a Czech version of the same content.
a) You have to create the English content (autonomous page or content item) and the relating menu item. Both should have the lanuage setting set to "English".
b) You have to create the Czech content (autonomous page or content item) and the relating menu item. Both should have the lanuage setting set to "Czech".
c) When you select English language on frontend, the English menu item item will be shown, linking to the English content. When you select Czech language on frontend, the Czech menu item item will be shown, linking to the Czech content.

Automatic Translation works only on live installations. Not local. This is because of the way the translation mechanism works.
The pair of available languages is not provided by Elxis, but from the translation service.
In this version, you can translate only content items. Not autonomous pages. Not menu items.

To transalate a content item, select it (NOT open it for editing) and click the translate icon on the toolbar.

I hope that I was on topic and gave you an answer...

[jozef]

Thank you eliasan, you are on topic.
OK, i will use your example. How can i define that element A (english page + menu item) is a translation of  czech element B. Let us think like my customer does. He wants to remove menu item from the web. He thinks, that by deleting of english element (menu item + content) automaticaly causes deletion of all translations. I hope you understand concept of my customer.

In other words: Customer wants to prepare simple web in one language using only autonomous pages and menu items. Now he decides to translate web to second language. He wants the same menu structure for second language, but some menu items will not be available in second language. During translation in backend (admin) he would like to see a content of autonomous page side by side in both languages, or at least copy from first language; and by deleting an autonomous page, he wants to delete both translation.

Is this scenario possible?

[eliasan]

Hi,

Menu items and autonomous pages (or content items) are separate entities. The only logical link is in the mind of the designer.

That means that when you delete a menu item the linked autonomous page is not deleted also.
The same applies for the reverse situation (deleting an autonomous page).

There are two approaches to creating multilingual websites with Elxis.

Approach A - One menu per language
You could suggest to your customer to create a menu (lets call it MenuE) for the English language and a separate menu (lets call it MenuC) for the Czech language. All English menu items will be in menuE and all the Czech on menuC.

As we know each menu is displayed on the site through a module. In this case you will have the ModuleForMenuE and the ModuleForMenuC.

You could place them on the same module position and select the first will be visible when the selected language is English and the second when the selected language is Czech.

Tip: Create the first menu and populate the menu items, deciding their structure.
Create the second menu and copy the menu items from the first to the second. Then all you have to do is change the language parameter and the autonomous page they are pointing to.


Approach B - Use only one menu
In this case, you will create menu items for the English and Czech language using the same menu. The English ones will have their language set to English and the Czech, set to Czech.

As we have only one menu, we will use only one module, set to be visible on all languages.

When we select English on frontend, only the English menu items will be visible. The same applies for Czech.

Note: Using Elxis you can create sites with different content, menus, menu items, based on the selected language. For example, in English you can have 2 menus and 10 pages, but in Czech you can have 5 menus and 40 pages. Designing smartly, you can even have different templates used.

[jozef]

Thank for your patience.
You answered only first part of scenario.
I still can not see how to manage translation of content.

Let us look on demo installation.
Imagine a fresh installation. I turn-on english and german languages in Language Manager screen.
Let us look into "Content"->"All content items" admin screen. Record "Welcome to Elxis!" has status "5 languages".
But when i switch in frontend the language dropdown to german, there is english content on Home page!? WHERE and HOW can i manually edit german content of "Welcome to Elxis!" page?
What does  "5 languages" mean?

[jozef]

OK, I have studies the structure of the database.
I see no db field to store relation between "original" and "translated" content item. There is no "original-translated" concept in Elxis. Content has only attribute "language" which is a cumulative string of language names. If language db field contains current language, then content is visible.
That is all, no other magic, no other help for human translator 

[eliasan]

I think that by just answering the "What does "5 languages" mean?" question, everything will be clear.

"5 languages" mean that this content (whatever it contains), will be visible if the user selects on the frontend one of the 5 languages.

If you want to have the same content written in 5 different languages then you have to create 5 separate items. Each one should have the appropriate language setting.

[jozef]

Now i understand.
It is flexible, but not usable for human traslator.
IMHO the human translator will be lost in this jungle. He needs some tool to identify "what is translation of what". Imagine you have bilingual english - japan web. You can not read japan characters. The japan translation was done by external firm. You want simply remove one page from your web. You remove the english one, the japan one is still published. Because you can not read japan you must call the external translator to remove the page.
I am sorry, it seems to be very complicated to manage multilingual web with Elxis  :'(

[eliasan]

The "relation" field is a really good idea and can be used in future releases.

Until then, someone could use an off-line strategy to keep track additions and changes on a multilingual website maintained by more than one parties (teams of translators).

If this strategy is strict enough, then noone will be lost.

Have you found the "Content by Language" feature? ( Content -> Content by language )

[jozef]

yes i have found it.
But it does not display autonomous pages or other content, e.g. poll.
Apropos poll, there is no relation too, isnt it? Poll results are separate per language?

[eliasan]

Correct!
In this version it is limited to show only content items.

We thank you for your critisism. You sound like a pro and I bet that you are.
Elxis is always a work under development. We like to hear ideas like yours because help us to make it better.

Thank you!

[datahell]

The translation feature must be considered as work in progres. Next Elxis version will have some new features like comparison of the translated text with the original before saving.

[jozef]

Hi friends,
yes i am very interested in PHP CMS with full multilingual support.
I have used Mambo with Mambelfish and Drupal with its i18n module (i18n == internationalization, l10n = localization).

My thoughts:
1. UTF-8 is best choice.
I hope you are aware of pitfalls using UTF-8 and PHP.
I see you use a separate class, very good.
More enhanced version can be found here
http://sourceforge.net/projects/phputf8
 
2. Add i18n and l10n features or API to Elxis core ASAP.
It will be very difficult to add later.
Create some guide how to write multilingual components and modules.
 
3. I do not want be critic to your concept of db field language varchar(250).
It has pros and cons. I would like to suggest enhancement.
Do not use name for languages like "english", "greek" etc.
Use standard code, e.g. locale en_US, en_GB, gr_GR, etc.
Look at ICU. PHP6 uses ICU ;-)
http://blog.agoraproduction.com/index.php?/archives/19-Installing-PHP6-For-beginners.html
http://icu.sourceforge.net/
http://demo.icu-project.org/icu-bin/locexp?_=gr_GR

4. Relation between translations of content.
Maybe it is possible to store relation into new db field "translation" varchar(250).
Taking the suggestion from point 3 and table elx_content with demo data, look at record "Video":
id|language|translation
27|en_GB,de_DE,it_IT,es_ES,fr_FR|gr_GR=28
28|gr_GR|en_GB=27
Pros: You do not need new tables for relations.
Cons: It is against database normalization.