Back in January, we were contacted by MD Systems about a hackathon they were putting on in Zurich, Switzerland, to enhance internationalization and localization tools for the Drupal Content Management System (CMS). Drupal, one of the most widely deployed CMS, is regularly employed by Sony, Warner Brothers, Fast Company, The Economist and more. At myGengo, we think our API and focus on quality, affordable human translation would be a great fit for any Drupal site that's looking to localize into another language, so we made an effort to get out to Zurich to support the cause.
For a little over a week, we worked with tons of Drupal developers to create a plugin that can translate any bit of content within a Drupal installation. Over 100 days worth of developer effort went into this event, and the results paid off. This plugin allows the user to choose from a variety of translation service providers, which myGengo is included in. It supports all our language pairs and tiers right off the bat, which covers the most popular translation paths at a generally low cost. An additional bonus feature is that this plugin can be configured to use multiple different myGengo accounts, which is great for companies and organizations.
Astute readers will note that we list a Drupal plugin on our API Labs Page. We're always happy to see third party developers using and integrating our API, but with the hackathon approach, we felt we could help influence localization and internationalization tools for Drupal on a larger scale. With this approach, more eyes have seen the code, and more developers are able to enhance these tools over time allowing for a better integration of our API.
We'd also like to take a minute to thank the sponsors of this hackathon: Microsoft, Acquia, Amazee Labs, Supertext and S.W.I.S. GROUP. The event would not have been possible without the organizer, MD Systems, who graciously opened up their office space for a week and diverted resources to the project (a full list of the sponsors can be found here).
At myGengo, we're always interested in ways to integrate our API to ease localization efforts for websites and communities, so we were ecstatic to be a part of this hackathon. We're incredibly excited to see how these tools can help more sites that use Drupal "go global". As the code is refined and cleaned up, we'll continue to relay updates and news about how existing Drupal sites can start using them!
