Editing Drupal Hospex Features (section)

== Multi-language features ==
Drupal has a lot of language features already built-in (core locale module). You can get more with the [http://drupal.org/project/i18n Internationalization ("i18n") module] and a bunch of other extra modules.

=== Translated content (nodes) ===
If you want to translate a node, Drupal creates a new node for each language version.

=== Translated text ===
Drupal, similar to WordPress, has a translation function used inside core and module code, used this way:

  t('Please translate this piece of text');

Consequence: If you change one letter of this text, all the translations need to be re-done. And, if two texts are the same in the code, the translations will also be the same - even if the context is different.

The BW system works differently, because the translation function does not get the English string as an argument, but a keyword. In some way this is more flexible, because you can have different keywords for two texts that might be the same in English, but different in Russian. And, you can change the English translation without flushing all other translations, and without changing the code. On the other hand, if you implement a new page you always have to add some english translations, otherwise it will look horribly broken.

=== Interface for translators ===
The current platform running [[BeWelcome]] has some nice features for translators, where translation links are placed directly in the content. The BW system does work even if the text to translate is in a html tag attribute (such as, an image '''alt''' attribute, or a link '''title''' attribute - the link is placed somewhere where it doesn't break the layout.

Drupal has some similar features, but I have not checked out how they work exactly. Would be a good idea to do some research.