Enterprise Drupal: Extending Translation Capabilities with Localization Client Module

The Localization Client Module is a contributed  Drupal module that provides enterprises with an efficient, user-friendly way of translating content in-place. Localization Client module provides a graphic interface that helps a user translate almost any content through it on every single Drupal page.

In order to make this module work, we need to enable some of the core modules that come with a Drupal fresh install called:

    Locale
    Content Translation

We also need to install any language pack for Drupal, for  the tool provided by the Localization Client module to work.

To do so, we need to download and install any language package we want our site to handle by following the next steps:

First download a language pack from:

    http://drupal.org/project/Translations

Once you get the compressed file, unpack it on the ROOT directory of your Drupal installation

    # my-site/tar -xvzf es-6.x-1.4.tar.gz

where es-6.x-1.4.tar.gz is the compressed file you just downloaded. When done, we need to import all the .po files to Drupal so it can take advantage of entire new translation package, we can do so through the Add Language Page:

    admin/settings/language/add

Just add the new language according to the language pack you downloaded and Drupal will take care of importing all translations automatically.

On the configure page you can set up how you want Drupal to handle the URLs for the translated content:

    
    admin/settings/language/configure

For easy handling, let's now activate the Language Switcher Block that is provided by the Locate Module and place it anywhere on your page.

Once the block is activated and placed on any region of the site, you will see the languages that you have currently installed on your system and also by clicking on any option, Drupal will show the defined language.

Now that we have a new language installed on our system, we can activate the Localization Client Module  on the module page.

So, obviously for the English version of Drupal there will be nothing to translate since it is the default Drupal language, but you'll find a nice bar at the bottom of the page when you switch to another language with a text saying “Translate Text”. If you click on it, a little window will be displayed showing all the strings that can be translated for that current page. Plus, at that same, you'll see a window you can translate any of those strings instantaneously through it. Nice, isn't it?

This screen-shot shows how that little helpful windows looks like: