Multilingualism in Joomla
In principle, every Joomla installation is monolingual without any further action. Even if several languages are installed, only 1 language is available as the administration language and 1 language as the website language.
Activate the “Joomla Multi-Language Plugin” for multilingualism
Multilingualism in Joomla requires activation of the Joomla Multi-Language Plugin. If the plugin is activated, each supported language must be explicitly configured. As part of the configuration, a separate home menu entry must be created for each supported language.
Joomla creates true multilingualism using separate menu entries for each language. In practical terms, this simply means several linguistically separated websites, each with their own language, in a common Joomla installation.
Any specific content (regardless of whether it is an article, menu entry, module or Visforms form) can then either:
- be assigned to a specific language,
- or the content has no specific language assignment and can therefore be used in all languages.
If the Joomla Multi-Language Plugin is activated, Joomla automatically inserts the so-called language segment in the URL. If a URL is called with a language segment for which there is no configured language, then Joomla reverts to the default language. This is either the configured default website language or English.
If the plugin is activated, a language link can be configured for every Joomla content. This ensures that when you change the language in the frontend, the same content is displayed in the other language. This is relevant for:
- menu items,
- for articles,
- for article categories.
Multilingualism of Visforms’ own texts
There are already translations in the language files for all texts that Visforms provides itself. We deliver German and English. There are very good translations for numerous other languages, which are provided and updated by Visforms users.
Depending on the website language selected, the language files of the respective language are loaded. The selected website language is determined either via the URL language segment or via the configured default website language. By default, the English language files are always loaded. Translations are first searched for in the language files of the specific language. If no translation can be found, the default language is used.
Multilingualism of custom texts
For a truly multilingual website, one form per language is required in Visforms. This is due to the user-defined texts entered in the form configuration and field configuration. These texts must be entered in the language assigned to the form.
These texts from the form configuration and field configuration include:
- the form title,
- the label,
- information texts,
- Custom texts.
Note: Visforms' own texts, on the other hand, are always correctly determined from the language files for the current website language.
Determination of the language to be displayed
Below is a list of which setting is used to determine the current website language:
- Visforms menu entry: The language of the menu entry is used (i.e. the URL language segment).
- Visforms module: The language of the module is used.
- Plugin Form View: The language that results from the language segment is used.
Visforms data tables for multilingual forms
As with every Visforms form, the form data of several multilingual forms are located in their own different data tables. The name of the data table depends on the form ID.
Note: Merging multiple multilingual forms into a single data table is not possible.