Comprehending the Concept of Content Translation in Drupal 7

As businesses are expanding their horizon across national boundaries, the demand of multilingual websites has increased fourfold. In the desire to reach a widespread audience base, business owners are launching portals in multiple languages. By far, Drupal is the best known content management system (CMS) that provides support for multilingual websites. Every website handles content translation in a different manner. The latest version of the CMS, Drupal 7, comes with various translation options for content. This post takes a look at the various approaches of content translation in Drupal 7. It also throws light at the new possibilities offered by the introduction of Entity Translation Module in Drupal 7.

The Various Methods of Content Translation in Drupal 7:

In Drupal 7, content translation takes place at two levels- field level and node level. At field level, Entity Translation module facilitates the translation process while at the node level; the process is conducted with the aid of Content Translation module.

Translation at Field Levels by Entity Translation Module:

Entity Translation module helps you in translating individual fields without the need of creating any new entity or node. For instance, if you are translating a blog post using Entity Translation module, you need not create a new node. All you have to do is to translate particular fields of the blog. You can configure the fields that you want to translate. This means you can make the body of the blog post translatable while leaving the image or any other attachment untouched. This kind of translation is specifically useful in cases where content includes some language-independent components or fields.

Translation at Node Level by Content Translation Module:

Content Translation is a core module that allows Drupal 7 users to translate nodes. Every time a node is translated, a new node is created. After translation the nodes are mapped together. They are, however, distinct entities and you can treat them separately as well. They need not appear in the same menu. For instance, the date of publication and the author name in a blog post will be two different values.

Drupal 7 has improvised the language translation capabilities of Drupal CMS to a great extent. There are more translating options than never before. Whether you are looking for field level translation or node level translation, Drupal 7 offers elegant options for both. Content translation process is so  simple that you can do it yourself or hire drupal developers to assist you.