We've recently begun putting together the infrastructure for a number of upcoming projects which will organize people around the world toward some pretty powerful, ambitious goals. While the details of those sites are still in the works, working with Drupal to create multi-language sites has been a great experience involving a great deal of learning. This is the first of a two part series covering how Drupal works with multiple languages and the best practices/tricks of the trade for making the most of the Drupal Local, i18n and L10n systems.

What the h3l is this i18n/L10n c2p all about, anyway?

Don’t be scared by the geekspeak! “i18n” and “L10n” are just abbreviations for “internationalization” and “localization”, the engineering methodologies used to create software packages and websites which can be used by speakers of different languages. i18n is the process of engineering an application so that it can be adapted for use by speakers of different languages or in different regions without needing major modifications and L10n is the related step of providing conversions between languages, date formats, etc. so the software or site can be accessed in any particular language (see the Wikipedia article on i18n and L10n for more).