Multilingual websites / books

[maelle]

I was wondering whether having multilingual outputs (e.g. a website that's in French, one in English, with some way to map the corresponding pages so that one can have a button to switch) is on the roadmap?

(I saw https://quarto.org/docs/authoring/language.html#translations but my question is about another aspect, at least I think so 😅 )

[jjallaire]

I think that this could in principle be done now with some orchestration of multiple render passes. To me the key ingredient is devising a scheme for identifying which files are localized and which files are shared across all languages. Perhaps a naming schema like this:

index.qmd
index.fr.qmd
styles.css

When the site is rendered in fr mode it would substitute any file with a language suffix for its base file that has no suffix. It would also write to the _site/fr directory.

This isn't currently a feature, but an orchestration script could implement the following behavior:

1. Determine the current the language mode
2. Make a temporary copy of the project directory with the appropriate language file substitutions
3. Render within the temporary directory
4. Copy the rendered _site to e.g. _site/fr

The final piece would be implementing language switcher UI. This could be done in a bunch of different ways -- the best way to inject this into the site is probably an include-after-body HTML file that has the switcher and then uses a <script> tag to move it into the optimal place in the UI (e.g. in the navbar, at the top right of the page, etc).

Note that this script could be written in TypeScript using the Deno standard library (https://quarto.org/docs/projects/quarto-projects.html#project-scripts). It would also be fine to write it in R or Python, but users would then need to make sure they have the right dependencies on their system to run it.

Those are some ideas on prototyping multilingual sites. I am sure we will implement this at some point but I'm not sure exactly when.

[sbalci]

Hi,
I am also on doing a bilingual book.
I have prepared two _quarto.yml files. With the below script in R I copy the English quarto file as the main one, define the language in a common R code then render the book. Then do the same process for Turkish.

In chapters the content is selected from asis engine based on the language.

```{asis, echo = (language == "TR")}
# Bakteriler
```

```{asis, echo = (language == "EN")}
# Bacteria
```

Still working on it. Some points are not resolved. Will try to run with github actions.

See repository here.

# prepare EN ----

fs::file_copy(path = "./_quarto_EN.yml",
              new_path = "./_quarto.yml",
              overwrite = TRUE)

fs::file_copy(path = "./R/languageEN.R",
              new_path = "./R/language.R",
              overwrite = TRUE)

# render EN ----

quarto::quarto_render(".")


# prepare TR ----

fs::file_copy(path = "./_quarto_TR.yml",
              new_path = "./_quarto.yml",
              overwrite = TRUE)


fs::file_copy(path = "./R/languageTR.R",
              new_path = "./R/language.R",
              overwrite = TRUE)

# render TR ----

quarto::quarto_render(".")

[maelle]

My own experiment: https://github.com/ropensci-review-tools/babelbook

[sbalci]

Still working on it. Some points are not resolved. Will try to run with github actions.

See repository here.

Now works with github actions: https://github.com/patolojiatlasi/patolojiatlasi.github.io/blob/main/.github/workflows/Quarto-Render-Bilingual-Book-Push-Tweet-Updates.yml

[mcanouil]

Mentioning the following Pandoc divs feature which can be of use here: https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#language-variables.

---
lang: en-GB
---

Text in the main document language (British English).

::: {lang=fr-CA}
> Cette citation est écrite en français canadien.
:::

More text in English. ['Zitat auf Deutsch.']{lang=de}

PS: I do not know how it plays with Quarto 🤷‍♂️

[mcanouil]

Did you try to override the metadata with for example quarto render index.qmd --metadata lang:fr and use some conditional using the metadata (there is the {{< meta lang >}} shortcode)?

This is basically what I implemented in quarto-dev/quarto-r#52.

[cutterkom]

Hello,

I have recently created a multi-language quarto website

• https://queerdata.forummuenchen.org (in German)
• https://queerdata.forummuenchen.org/en (in English)

I don't have a code level suggestion, my comments are more from real world project user testing perspective ...

So, first I had worked with @maelle's idea, however then the index.html of the English page (my second language) would not have been accessible, without explicit URL.

Example:

• myurl.com/en/index.html -> 404 error
• myurl.com/en/index.en.html -> success (200)

But I want my index page to be reachable without a specific html. At this point, I stopped working with babelbook because the deadline was approaching and I wanted a pragmatic, simple solution.

My final setup:

quarto-website
└── img
└── de
    └── quarto.yml
    └── index.qmd
    └── about.qmd
    └── docs
           └── index.html
           └── about.html
           └── site_libs
           └── search.json
└── en
    └── quarto.yml
    └── index.qmd
    └── about.qmd
    └── docs
           └── index.html
           └── about.html
           └── site_libs
           └── search.json

Main aspects:

• two different folders with two different .quarto.yml files. I want different terms for links and other aspects like footer, open graph meta data. I don't want german menu items on the english page.
• The images are pulled from the same source, so they all have the path ../img/my_img.png
• Upload oldschool via FTP to a webserver.

Folder structure on webserver:

quarto-website
└── img
└── index.html                 # no folder for main language
└── about.html
└── site_libs
└── search.json
└── en                                # subfolder for second language
   └── index.html
   └── about.html
   └── site_libs        
   └── search.json

Downside:

• unneccessary duplication of css and js files in site_libs

Comment to @sbalci approach: Having language-specific blocks seemed very convincing for me at first. But I found it confusing on a longer text-heavy document just very few code blocks and switched back to completly different files. Probably the other way round in a code-heavy document with just short text paragraphs.

Okay, these are my 2 cents ...

Best
Katharina

[mghassany]

Hello all, I also need to produce two versions of my quarto book, not in two langages, but one without solutions and with solutions.
I was doing this easily in bookdown, by creating two .yml files, and then by choosing the config_file when rendering bookdown::render_book()

example: bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd", output_format = "bookdown::gitbook", encoding = 'UTF-8', config_file="_bookdown_corrections.yml", output_dir = "_book_corrections")

I see that we can precide the output-dir in the .yml with quarto.

Is possible to do the same way for quarto books ?

[mcanouil]

Maybe something like:

quarto create-project --type book

Edit for example index.qmd:

---
params:
  solution: false
---

# Preface {.unnumbered}

This is a Quarto book.

To learn more about Quarto books visit <https://quarto.org/docs/books>.

```{r}
#| echo: false
#| output: asis
#| eval: !expr as.logical(toupper(params[["solution"]]))
cat("::: {.solution}\nThe solution.\n:::")
```

Then you can run:

quarto render -P solution:false

quarto render -P solution:true

[mghassany]

Thanks for trying. It is workaround, I am not sure it works (tested in a qmd chapter and didn't work but maybe did something wrong). Anyway I see some limitations to your suggestion. Passing through a param that will be evaluated in eval forces that the solution is inside a R chunk then printed using cat(). In my solutions there are some codes to be executed and images and latex equations etc.. also the codes are sometimes in Python.

[jjallaire]

I think we need to create the possibility of configuration variations based on environment variables (or command line options, but the former is a bit more flexible). Then perhaps extend our existing conditional content directive (which is based on output format) to be a bit more general.