There are different approaches to translate the Drupal interface: either by importing an existing translation, by translating everything yourself, or by using a combination of these.

You need to add all languages you would like to provide the site interface in. If you can't find the desired language in the quick add dropdown, then need to provide the proper language code yourself. The language code might be used to negotiate with browsers and present flags, so it is important to pick one that is standardised for the desired language. You can also add languages by importing translations directly into a language not yet set up.

This page allows you to import a translation provided in the gettext Portable Object (.po) format. The easiest way to get your site translated is to grab an existing Drupal translation and to import it. You can obtain translations from the Drupal localization page.

This page allows you to export Drupal strings. The first option is to export a translation so it can be shared. The second option is to generate a translation template, which contains all Drupal strings, but without their translations. You can use this template to start a new translation using a specialized desktop application.

It is often more convinient to get the strings of your setup on the export page, and start with a desktop Gettext translation editor though. Here you can search in the translated and untranslated strings, and the default English texts provided by Drupal.

Most programs are written and documented in English, and primarily use English to interact with users. This is also true for a great deal of web sites. However, most people are less comfortable with English than with their native language, and would prefer to use their mother tongue as much as possible. Many people love to see their web site showing a lot less English, and far more of their own language. Therefore Drupal provides a framework to setup a multi-lingual web site, or to overwrite the default English texts.

How to interface translation works

Whenever Drupal encounters an interface string which needs to be displayed, it tries to translate it into the currently selected language. If a translation is not available, then the string is remembered, so you can look up untranslated strings easily.

Drupal provides two options to translate these strings. First is the integrated web interface, where you can search for untranslated strings, and specify their translations via simple web forms. An easier, and much less time consuming method is to import translations already done for your language. This is achieved by the use of GNU gettext Portable Object files. These are editable with quite convinient desktop editors specifically architected for supporting your work with GNU Gettext files. The import feature allows you to add strings from such files into the site database. The export functionality enables you to share your translations with others, generating Portable Object files from your site strings."); break; // TODO: integrate a rewritten version of this help into the big help screen above /* "

To translate strings start at the search page of the locale section in the administration pages. There you will see a list of the languages you have configured. Choose the appropriate settings and search for the strings you want to translate.

At the locale page, users with the proper access rights will see the various texts that need translation on the left column of the table.

Below the text you can see an example URI where this text shows up one your site or a file and the line number in the source code. Chances are most of these texts will be used and displayed on more than one page, though only one example URI is presented.

The second column displays the supported languages as defined in the configuration file. See below for more information on how to support new languages. If the symbol for a language is seen like this, it means that this entry still needs to be translated into that language. If not, it has been translated already.

To add or change a translation click the \"edit locale\" link in the third column, the \"operations\" column. You'll be presented the original text and fields for translation in the supported languages. Enter the translations and confirm by clicking the \"Save translations\" button. The translations need not be accurate; they are for your site so you can choose what to show to your users.

To delete a translation, click the \"delete locale\" link at the overview page and the translation will be immediately deleted without confirmation. Deleting translations is convenient for removing texts that belonged to an obsolete module.

In some texts special strings such as \"%a\" and \"%b\" show up. Those get replaced by some string at run-time when Drupal dynamically generate pages. You can find out which string this is by looking at the page where the text appears. This is where the above mentioned URI and code line numbers can come in handy.

Uploading PO files

PO files are files containing translations as used by GNU gettext.

The Drupal project distributes user contributed PO files in a number of languages. These files can be obtained from the Drupal translations home page.

If you want to provide a PO file for a not yet supported language or update an existing PO files, read about it in the Drupal handbook home page.

Once you got the appropriate PO file, all you have to do is to add the locale and upload it from the manage locale screen.

Note that uploading and parsing the uploaded file can take quite some time, depending on the connection to the server and the server's power.