In very detailed words:
I will try to be clear with this, if i make some mistake, someone please correct me. Initially i was very confused myself.
Firstly for
(a) Categories,
(b) Fields (their title NOT their values in each item),
(c) Tags,
(d) Files you can use joomfish to translate them.
To have a quick access to their translation, i strongly recommended to use the Joomfish Backend module "Direct Translation". For configuring the module please see this article by Emmannuel:
www.flexicontent.org/documentation/faq/i...oomfish-support.html
Now, You have 2 option to translate your items:
1.
Use joomfish for translating items (which means that you only translate Title and description) and then use joomfish language selection module in the frontend to select language.
2.
Use Flexicontent to create FULL item translations for every article, and then as above use joomfish language selection module in the frontend to select language.
Multilingual configuration for APPROACH 1
Activate Joomfish support: Yes
Filter category views: No
Filter tag views: No
Disable language selector: No
Multilingual configuration for APPROACH 2
Activate Joomfish support: Yes
Filter category views: Yes
Filter tag views: Yes
Disable language selector: No
Every approach has its advantages and disadvantages.
Approach 1 Disadvantages:
a. Only being able to translate title and description fields.
Because you only translate title and description you cannot change values of other fields, so you cannot customize your field text values and field's display properties per language.
b. Not being able to use versioning in the translation and any other features that flexicontent has inside its item editor (eg diff display).
Approach 1 Advantages:
a. Much fewer articles in the Flexicontent item manager
b. Because you have the same single item for all languages (joomfish keeps translations for title and description in its table). All displayed item translations will share field values such hits and comments (
maybe some people would want hits and comments, etc to be per language, then they should choose Approach 2).
c. Less work, because they share field values you don't have to update field value for all translations of the article.
Approach 2 Disadvantages:
a. Since using different items per item translation, hits and comments etc are per translated item!!!
b. Much more items in the Flexicontent Item manager, but this is not really problem, is it?
The real problem is how correlate translations together so that they switch in the front-end when you switch language?
The problem has been solved by the contribution of a forum member that made a plugin to automatically display the corresponding language item in the front-end.
So how the items are correlated as being translations of one an other?
You use the same alias in them and of course you Flexicontent Item editor allows you to select language.
--> I would recommend to make an alias that includes the item_id of the original language article(item), just to be more sure you do not make to unrelated articles have the same alias and confuse the translation plugin.
Get this plugin here:
www.flexicontent.org/forum/index.php?f=23&t=710&rb_v=viewtopic
Approach 2 Advantages:
a. Full item Translations
b. Separate hits, comments etc per translation, (this is both advantage and disadvantage)
c. Being able to use the advanced flexicontent item editor for both original item and its translations
Conclusion, which to choose:
I think the most powerful approach is approach 2, with its only serious disadvantage not being able to share field values e.g. hits and comments as these go per translated item. But maybe approach 1 is more suitable for someone else.
But Wait, this maybe can be done in the code, meaning to choose which item will be gotten from the original article and which from the translated. We could add a flag in every field to declare it as translated or not. This will have to advantages, we will not need to update for every translation and some data will be put only on the original item. These remain to be examined how to be implemented, if possible.
Warning: when using solution 2, if you have Joomfish items translations, delete or unpublish them, otherwise they will take precedence.
Best Regards
