The Multilingual Makeover: A side-by-side comparison of Drupal 7 and Drupal 8

We live in a global, interconnected world, and building websites that support multiple languages and countries is good for marketing, conversions, and creating happy users. It does not, however, also mean you will have happy developers.

Drupal 7 is notoriously hard for creating multilingual websites. Language support in D7 was bolted-on and adhoc and tends to require 20 to 30 extra modules and often a number of patches and custom workarounds as well. Drupal 7 multilingual configuration is ugly. And that's being kind.

But, Drupal has had a complete multilingual makeover! Enter Drupal 8. You might think we are talking about slapping on some makeup here, but we aren't.

Definition: A makeover is "a complete reconstruction and renovation of something"

The Drupal 8 Multilingual Initiative had quite a mess to untangle. The goal was to rebuild language support in Drupal from the ground up so that everything in Drupal understood language from the start. And, any custom or contributed modules or themes for Drupal 8 would reap the benefit of not really having to understand language support because it would just "be there". The results are amazing.

This session is a side-by-side comparison of ugly Drupal 7 configuration and beautiful Drupal 8 configuration. What took 20+ modules in Drupal 7, takes 4 in Drupal 8, with no workarounds, patches, or hacks.

We'll compare Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 configuration for:

• Language support
• User interface translation
• Content translation
• Configuration translation
• And more...

Anyone building or managing multilingual sites would benefit from this session. You will walk away with knowledge of the how Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 multilingual configuration differs so you can prepare yourself for site building in either version.

This session is suitable for beginners or intermediates. If you are beginner, it is best if you understand Drupal basics such as content types, blocks, menus, and views. If you are an expert, don't forget to send your favorite multilingual module, tip, or horror story to @kristen_pol on Twitter.

Gábor Hojtsy is an avid open source enthusiast and contributor. He is an active Drupal developer, working with and on the open source project itself at Acquia. Gábor is the Drupal 8 multilingual initiative lead, maintainer of Drupal 6, and maintainer of localize.drupal.org.

Kristen has been working with Drupal since 2004 as a developer and architect, specializing in multilingual, migrations, and SEO. Kristen wrote the Drupal 7 Multilingual Sites book. She has presented at DrupalCons, BADCamps, Stanford camps, and other Drupal camps and user group meetings. Check out Kristen's drupal.org page and her Hook 42 team page for more info.

This "Multilingual Makeover" talk was presented by Aimee Degnan and Kristen Pol at DrupalCon New Orleans 2016.

To make multilingual Drupal 8 site building even better, please get involved with the Drupal 8 Multilingual Initiative! You can also sprint with us before, during, and after the main DrupalCon Dublin session days. You do not need to know how to code to help. Testers, reviewers, writers, and designers are very welcome.