Multilingual tags

PaulBuhtab

The idea is quite simple. If I run a multilingual site, I would like to have tag translation for each language. The same way as it is done with titles, descriptions.
So this post is feature suggestion for further versions.
Without it tags functionality on multilingual sites is truncated. As fo the mechanism for that I suggest to have a “tag ID”, “translation1”, “translation2” just as it done now for other properties. Not different sets of optionally linked tags for each language (as, for example, in Joomla).

acrylian

We are aware that tags miss multilingual capabilities. The next major version indeed will have tag language sets. Sorry, we will not make tags itself translatable with titles and names like other items because a tag is considered unique.

That would likely require quite some rework of internal things like the search engine (not to speak of compatibility issues) we don't really have time for right now.

PaulBuhtab

Tags can be unique within each language, can't they?
So, different sets of tags displayed for the image depending on site language. The title is also considered unique for each lang
I can understand that current database structure is unable to enclose this functionality and that extending db and logic will demand to rework several modules.
Glad that you plan to solve the problem some how, some time.

acrylian

So, different sets of tags displayed for the image depending on site language.

Yes, the future tag set will allow a tag to be assigned to one or in case it is the same term in several languages to several tag language sets.

The title is also considered unique for each lang

A tag is a tag is a tag ;-)

PaulBuhtab

Users have no choice but to rely on developer’s wisdom :-)
“Let it be, Let it be…”
I’m afraid to ask about introducing custom multilingual metadata IPTC fields (such as “Country.En_US”, “Country. de_AT”)

acrylian

Well, you can ask about anything ;-) To my knowledge meta data is not multilingual per se. But other fields - nearly all you can manage manually - are multilingual capable.

You could also use the `plugin_storage` extra table for any custom requirement.

PaulBuhtab

Let me summarize my ideas on metadata.
It is declared that Zenphoto is a file based CMS. And we can gather EXIF or other metadata from images and display it next to image using templates (a small subset for now). We can add custom fields to images and through that opportunity implement multilingual support for metadata.
Whether it would be done through extensions or by core using settings but displaying different metadata fields depending on the site language could be useful.

acrylian

I think since imported metadata is never multilingual this is something that would need to be done via a plugin and/or the theme itself. I fear this will not have any priority for us at the moment. Too limited resource and working on the next major release behind the scenes. But if you like to work on an plugin or something we can try to help here.

PaulBuhtab

Got it.

sbillard

Multi-lingual tag support is available in ZenPhoto20.

Michel Gagnon

Paul, if you do not have too many tags, one way to do multilingual tags would be to literally tag things in more than one language. For instance, if you have a boating scenery in Québec, you could tag it "Québec", "boat", "bateau", "barco", "scenery", "paysage", "paisajes", for tags in English, French and Spanish.

reine

Great to hear that you're planning to add support for multilingual tags
Do you have an idea when it will be available?

I'm setting up a (small) multilingual site and my plan is/was to use tags lot.
For me it's not a solution to have tags in different languages that everyone can see.
Actually I would be hoping for the same as PaulBuhtab in the original post

@PaulBuhtab are you working on your metadata idea?

@acrylian with the implementation you propose you assign a language / languages to a tag, but is there a relationship between the same tag in different languages (I have the impression it's not the case)?
If not, what would / will the language switcher do if, say, I'm on the page for tag "X" in English and now I select French as my language?

acrylian

Sorry, we can't tell when this will be available. This will be part of a bigger release and we currently are all a bit busy outside ZP. There a still quite a few things to do before we want and can release that.

You will be able to assign a tag to several (or all) languages, so if tag "x" is available in English and in French all will work normally. If it is not assigned to French however it will not since it is simply "not there".

reine

You will be able to assign a tag to several (or all) languages, so if tag "x" is available in English and in French all will work normally

Yes now I've played around a bit and I see how it will work.
That's OK for me to assign the same tag in different languages, as long as only the ones in the language of the visitor are shown.
And if people already did that multiple assignment (as recommended in several forum threads...), as soon as they assign a language to each tag it will work for them without changing the tag assignments that's nice I think. I'll probably do that in the meantime, then.
It's also nice to be able to add several languages to the same tag if it's the same word in several languages

Sorry, we can't tell when this will be available

OK, I understand that you don't have a defined schedule, I was asking just in case you were about ready

In Github there's an issue about it and there's a commit from sbillard, but that's not, like, a merge/port of the Zenphoto20 multilingual tags feature to Zenphoto, right? (looking at the commit I'm actually not sure of the relationship of the commit to the issue - as I'm new to Github I'm not sure if I'm missing something there ^_^")

acrylian

Multilingual tags will be generally backward compatible. If you run in single language mode all will be like it is now, only if you enable the multilingual mode the tag sets will be available and used.

Zenphoto20 is a fork of Zenphoto who left the project last year. It is an entirely separate project from us now and we are not involved with it.