Drupal CMS 2.2.0 was released on 25 September. The announcement describes it as a release that is “all about multilingual”. Publishing in several languages has always been possible in Drupal. What has changed is how much of the setup is done for you.
What is new
- A searchable language picker in the installer. You can type to find your language instead of scrolling a long list.
- Translated recipe configuration. Before this release, a site installed in another language still showed the content types, fields, views and dashboard that recipes provide in English. That configuration is now translated with the rest of the site.
- A multilingual recipe. It installs the modules you need, applies the basic language settings and gives you a checklist for the remaining steps. The content translation settings page gains a “Recommended setup” option that switches on translation for the things most often translated: content types, Canvas pages, menu links and taxonomy terms.
- Translation in Drupal Canvas. Canvas, the page builder in Drupal CMS, now supports translation. Editors can translate any component on a page and preview the translated version before publishing.
- A new demo. Umami, the multilingual demo that has shipped with Drupal core, will not be included in Drupal 12. Its content has moved to a new demo called Dashi, built with Canvas.
The release notes have the full list, including a change to how the base recipes are organised.
A note on machine translation
The release bundles a module that can produce AI-generated translations of Canvas components with one click. For public information that is a starting point, not a finished translation. If you publish in Welsh, Gaelic, Irish or a community language, have a fluent speaker review the text before it goes live, as you would with any other draft.
Where this fits
Drupal CMS is a packaged version of Drupal built from recipes and site templates. It is a different starting point from LocalGov Drupal, which has its own multilingual module, so this release does not change a LocalGov Drupal site. It is most relevant if you are starting a new site outside the LocalGov Drupal distribution, or if you want to see where Drupal’s editing tools are heading.
The multilingual work was the first demo in the keynote at DrupalCon Rotterdam. We have summarised the rest in our write-up of the Driesnote.
