If you are building a multilingual website with Joomla! for the first time, you might have read some documentation and keep in mind several things before building the site.
You have a good manual for building the site in
https://docs.joomla.org/J3.x:Setup_a_Multilingual_Site
Things to keep in mind:
1. In the latest Joomla! versions, installing a language also creates the content language. Therefore, you generally do not have to create any content language. You only have to do it if after installing a language you delete it from the content languages because in this case when you reinstall the language the content language is no longer created. If you ever have to do it keep in mind the following:
Be careful with language tags. The language tag must be valid and exactly equal to the language lag for the language you have installed on your site. If not, you will not see that language in the Language Switcher. Then you have to change the Language Tag and if you created elements in that language with the wrong language tag you will have to change them all by hand and in some cases you'll probably need to touch the database. This can be a nightmare, so it's much better to do it right the first time.
2. If you're building a multilingual website based on a monolingual website, probably all monolingual site elements will have language 'All' assigned. If so, the first thing you have to do is to change the language from 'All' to the actual language in which the elements are written, and that will be the source/reference language. Do it for all the elements of the site, except those who are going to be shown in all languages, such as the Language Switcher module. In KMFasTrans you have a tool to do this. Please consult Set up the Site for Multilingual Help.
3. Go to 'Setup the Site as Multilingual' screen and click the button "Create". This will create the mandatory items in language 'All'.
4. Complete the multilingual set up following the instructions on the document above (for instance, you must create a root category for each language and type of content).
5. If you need some special process to perform during machine translation, such as translating the XXX text in the sequence {tab = XXX}, the time to configure it is before starting the translations. Please consult Translation Tags and Special Translation Processes.
6. Start translating elements using KMFasTrans. To avoid translations inconsistencies you must follow a translation workflow. Please visit Most efficient order to follow to perform translations.
7. Before setting the site online, check the following.
- Are the desired Content Languages published ?
- Are the Default Home Page menu items for each Content Language present and published?
- Is there a specific menu containing a Default Home Page menu item to which is assigned language "All" and its menu module unpublished?
- Are the menu modules which display these Default Home Pages present and published?
- Is the 'Language Switcher' module present and published?
- Is the 'Language Filter' system plugin published?
