Have you thought of expanding your online business overseas? Or having identical platforms available to visitors in Spanish, French and German? There is one certain way to increase your business globally — create a multilingual website!
One might think that it is easy to translate any platform into any languages. However, there are a number of factors to consider when creating multilingual sites.
Our website development company prefers Drupal 8 content management system (CMS) for multilingual websites. Now find out what features make Drupal 8 the perfect choice for a multilingual website development
Benefits of Building a Multilingual Website
First things first. Why should you make your platform multilingual? The benefits of building a multilingual website are numerous. We point out some of the most important ones for your business:
To explore new markets.
Providing multilingual content is a necessity in a modern global marketplace. It’s all about reaching and building strong relationships with new customers and visitors. If your content is presented in the customer’s native language, consumption is easy and loyalty grows. If the visitor likes the platform, he might recommend it to his friends. This will rightly earn your place in new markets.
To get more visitors.
It’s obvious that the more languages your website is presented in, the more visitors you can reach. A multilingual platform is a great opportunity to appeal to people from other countries and to increase website traffic.
To sell more products and services.
Increased website traffic creates more product and service selling potentials. It’s a simple, by-the-numbers way to instantly expand your business.
To improve SEO.
In addition to Google, some countries have their own search engines. Enabling a multilingual search of your website will improve its SEO.
Why Build a Multilingual Site in Drupal 8?
The content of your website is built and stored in your CMS. Choosing the right CMS at the start makes development and further maintenance of a multilingual website much easier.
Why you should opt for Drupal 8?
Powerful built-in multilingual features in Drupal 8.
The Drupal CMS offers powerful multilingual features. What’s more, Drupal 8 provides built-in multilingual modules that make the process even simpler. They are Language, Interface Translation, Content Translation and Configuration Translation modules.
Drupal offers 90+ languages and has a built-in translational core.Drupal translates both your content as well as all the fields, forms and error messages. Everything from configuration settings to menus and views can be translated with the help of out-of-the-box modules in Drupal 8.
Drupal 8 is scalable for multilingual websites.
Drupal is scalable for all your needs. No matter how many languages you choose, it will deliver all your multilingual content.
Transliteration support in Drupal 8.
One really handy addition to Drupal 8 is the Transliteration module added to Drupal core. This module automatically converts special characters such as "ç" and "ü" to "c" and "u" for machine names, file uploads and search results.
And some more! What can you get by building a multilingual website in Drupal 8?
- Get automatic software translation updates from the Drupal community.
- Choose what content not to translate.
- Add a language selector to your site.
- Overview screen for translators, contextual translation tabs for site builders.
- Protected local, custom translations which are exportable.
These impressive multilingual capacities are among Drupal 8’s top benefits, and it is no wonder that more and more website owners are choosing to migrate to Drupal 8.
Core Modules for Building a Multilingual Website in Drupal 8
Drupal 8 comes with four build-in modules for a multilingual feature.
1. Language Module.
The Language module lets you choose out from 94 languages as of now. With this module you can assign a language to everything: nodes, users, views, blocks and menus. Browser language detection can be easily configured with external language codes. Each user is able to select his own language for the admin interface. Besides, there is built-in transliteration for the machine names.
2. Interface Translation Module.
The Interface Translation module translates the built-in user interface, your added modules and themes. It has built-in translation UI for easier editing. By allowing automatic downloads and updates, this module lets use any translation interface available in the Drupal community in any language supported by Drupal 8. English language is now customizable and removable. There is no more need to use English as your default language.
3. Content Translation Module.
The Content Translation module allows users to translate content entities. It also allows translating site content, including pages, taxonomy terms and blocks, into different languages. The same as in Interface Translation module, the default language of the content can be easily configured. Users can even hide or display the position of language selector.
4. Configuration Translation Module.
The configuration translation module provides a translation interface for configuration. It allows translating text that is part of the configuration, such as field labels, the text used in Views, etc.
Moreover, there is a provision of an overview screen to help you in the process.
Contributed Modules for Building a Multilingual Website in Drupal 8
Now, let’s proceed with the list of contributed modules that will help you build your Drupal 8 multilingual website.
1. Language Cookie Module.
Language Cookie module identifies visitors' mother languages. How? It simply adds an extra “cookie” field to the Language Negotiation settings. Therefore, the language on your website will instantly be set in accordance with this extra cookie.
2. IP Language Negotiation Module.
IP Language Negotiation is a key module for your Drupal 8 multilingual website. By detecting the countries that your visitors access your website from, it instantly displays the content on your website in their native languages.
3. Language Fallback Module.
Language Fallback module allows to specify a language fallback for each defined language, so translation can fallback to another language. If a certain translation can't be delivered to your visitors in your custom language, they will always get the requested content in another familiar language or dialect.
4. Language Selection Page Module.
Instead of trying to identify your website visitors' mother languages, let them choose the languages they'd like to see the content translated to. Language Selection Page module allows visitors of your website to select the language on landing page/splash page, based on the languages that have been enabled on your Drupal platform.
It’s Time to Build a Multilingual Website in Drupal 8
Content on your website determines traffic, positive user experience and conversion rates. Choosing the right CMS from the start is vital to managing the content of any proposed multilingual site.
As soon as Drupal 8 delivers multilingual platforms straight out-of-the-box, it is a perfect solution for building a multilingual website.
Our InternetDevels Drupal development company has years of experience in developing multilingual websites in Drupal CMS. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions regarding your multilingual platform or need our services on its development or support.