Translation

Making translation to Eprints3 is similar to that of earlier versions. Here only some of the differences are pointed out. Also, there is a difference between just translating, or making a multilingual site. If you are making a translation, then with little effort you can also make your site speak English too, a courtesy for casual visitors of your repository.

Considerations for a multilingual site

In a multilingual site probably you let the visitors to choose the language of the session. It is determined by the default setting of the browser preferences, but sometimes users want to change this. The manual setting of the session's language can be done by the [port] of the set_language script from earlier Eprintss versions. A handy place for the URL is in the menu at the top of the page. You might want to edit lib/defaultcfg/lang/en/templates/default.xml to put it there:

• <a href="{$config{frontpage}}">Home</a>
• <a ref="{$config{perl_url}}/set_lang">Language</a>
• <a href="{$config{base_url}}/information.html">About</a>

  ... 

The template page on other languages should not contain this Language item as not necessarily will people recognise it. Rather use a button which goes back to English":

<a href="{$config{perl_url}/set_lang?langid=en">In English</a>

By default, all e-mail messages are sent out on the default language. You might let the users to choose their preferred language so that they receive messages on their preferred language. The lang field is defined for all users; the value can be set automatically in defaultcfg/cfg.d/user_fields_automatic.pl

$c->{set_user_automatic_fields} = sub
{ my ( $user ) = @_;
   if( !$user -> is_set( "frequency" ) )
  {
        $user->set_value("frequency","never");
   }
   if( !$user -> is_set( "lang" ) )
   {
        $user->set_value("lang",$user->{session}->{lang}->{id});
   }
}

and also let the user edit their own preference by inserting the lang field in the defaultcfg/workflows/user/default.xml workflow, say in the personal section:

  <component type="Field::Multi">
     <title><epc:phrase ref="user_section_personal" /></title>
     <field ref="name" required="yes" />
     <field ref="lang"/>
     <field ref="dept"/>
     <field ref="org"/>
     <field ref="address"/>
     <field ref="country"/>
     <field ref="url"/>
   </component>

Patches

Apart from translating the language dependent phrase files, some other modification might be useful for a multilanguage repository:

• user names could be rendered depending on the language
• expiration time for the pin codes (e.g. when registering)
• generation time for the browse pages
• proper utf-8 encoding for outgoing e-mails

Here are some ideas what to do.

Rendering user names

All fields can have their separate rendering routine. This routine should be given as the value of the render_single_value attribute. In our case modify the top of cfg.d/user_fields.pl file which contains the definition of the user fields as follows:

 $c->{fields}->{user} = [
     {
         'name' => 'name',
         'type'   => 'name',
         'render_order' => 'gf',
         'render_single_value' => \&my_namefield_rendering,
     },
     ...

and insert the definition of my_namefield_rendering e.g. at the end of the same file:

sub my_namefield_rendering
{
   my ($session,$field,$value,$object)=@_;
   my $langid = $session->{lang}->{id}; 
   my $format = {
# format: f, g - first, given; h - honourific, l - lineage
     'en' => 'hfl,g',
     'hu' => 'hlfg',
# Further lines should be added for other used languages
   } -> {$langid}
   my $all="";
   foreach my $fmtchar ( split //, $format ) {
       my $insert="";
       if( $fmtchar eq "l" ) {$insert = $value->{lineage}; }
       elsif( $fmtchar eq "f" ) { $insert = $value->{family}; }
       elsif( $fmtchar eq "g" ) { $insert = $value->{given}; }
       elsif( $fmtchar eq "h" ) { $insert = $value->{honourific}; }
       elsif( $all ){ $all .= $fmtchar; }
       next if( ! $insert );
       $all .= $insert;
   }
   my $span=$session->make_element("span",class=>"person_name");
   $span->appendChild($session->make_text($all));
   $return $span;
}