About language codes and text direction
The 2015 templates support content internationalization by enabling the content provider to identify the language and text direction of elements on a web page. In most cases, language is identified by a two-letter code. In some cases, longer language codes are needed to provide added specificity (e.g., distinguishing between multiple dialects of a given language on the same page). Text direction is identified as either 'ltr' (left-to-right) or 'rtl' (right-to-left).
More information regarding language codes, the authorities that maintain them, and their proper selection can be found in the W3C's article Declaring Language in HTML.
Internationalization vs. translation
Please note that internationalization is not equivalent to translation. The 2015 template do not translate between languages; the content provider is responsible for the proper use, grammar, and spelling of all text, English and non-English alike.
Setting internationalization
Internationalization can be applied to text, images, pages, and folders:
| Element type | What internationalization applies to |
|---|---|
| Text | Direct application to the text itself |
| Image | The image's alt attribute. |
| Page |
|
| Folder | The folder display name. |
There are two situations in which you can set the language and direction of elements: via datadef form elements and via wysiwyg.
Via form elements
The following datadef form elements are are reused in many places in the 2015 templates for the purposes of internationalization:
| Form element | Description |
|---|---|
| Set internationalization | Set to 'yes' if the respective text element is written in a language other than English. |
| ... > Internationalization > Language code | Only appears when 'Set internationalization' is set to 'yes'. Required. Enter the language code of the text element here. |
| ... > Internationalization > Text direction | Only appears when 'Set internationalization' is set to 'yes'. Select the direction of the text element here. |
Via wysiwyg
Unfortunately, Cascade does not provide any easy way to indicate language or text direction for text entered elements in a wysiwyg. The only way to do so is to edit the underlying html directly to add the appropriate html attributes:
- Toggle the 'Edit HTML source' option in the wysiwyg toolbar.
- Locate the non-English element.
- For text elements, ensure ...
- ensure that the non-English text is contained in its own element. For example
- ,
<p>This is English, <span>esto es Español.</span></p>
In the above, note that the entire Spanish portion is wrapped in its own element (in this case<span>), which separates it from the English portion. - Add the
langanddirattributes as necessary. The above example would then look like:
<p>This is English, <span lang="es" dir="ltr">esto es Español.</span></p>
The dir attribute isn't needed here (since left-to-right is the default document direction), but I included it to illustrate its use.
- For non-text elements (images, etc.)...