Create "multilanguage" site without redundant text in typo3

Question

I'm not a big typo3 expert nor have I access to typoscript options at the typo3 instance I'm working with (It's a very big site and I don't have the authorization to do so). So I hope this question fits on stackoverflow (Please don't hate me if it does not, I'll happily post this on another site)

What I'm trying to achieve is:

• My website has two possible translations (German and English). I see that it's possible to switch languages during surfing through clicking the "German"/"English"-Button
• On the website are also informations about our staff (who may not be speaking german)
• If one staff member doesn't speak german, I copy redundantly their english profile on the german translation mode (that it appears, because otherwise it doesn't - might be no good style, but it's better than not having them appear at all)

I'm not happy with these kind of redundancy since it means that I have to do the same action twice on the exactly same content. Does there exist a possibility in the backend of typo3 where I can set that the german translation shall be the exact same as the english content?

I hope my question is clear, thanks a lot for your help.

Answer 1

As you say you don't have access to typoscript templates etc, I guess you are not an integrator/developer in this project, but an editor.

Your only way to achieve an automatic "fallback" behaviour is asking the person who takes care of the site's configuration to set that up for you.

But if that's not possible, you can still use the "insert records" content element (german: "Datensatz einfügen") to avoid duplicate entries.

This content type is not in the wizard when you create a new content element. But you can create a text element and then change the type to "insert records". Now you can select another record which is then mirrored here:

You'll have a similar amount of work when setting it up, but you won't have redundant text, which is way better.

If this content type isn't available either, I would insist on the administrator enabling it for editors - it's very useful to maintain a site's content healthy.

Answer 2

Would be helpful to see your TypoScript configuration. Maybe theres something wrong with the sys_language_mode. Given that the sys_language_uid of english is 0 (which means its default language) and german is 1, the default behaviour should be, that german translations are shown, if available. If a translation is not available the default version of a content element is shown. However, you can change this behaviour with Typoscript:

config.sys_language_mode = content_fallback ; 5,3,1

This will set the content fallback of an content element (which is triggered if no translation exists) to sys_language_uid 5, if its not available in that language sys_language_uid 3 will be displayed etc.

Maybe your installation is set to

config.sys_language_overlay = hideNonTranslated

This will hide non-translated content-elements. Remove this entry to enable content fallback again.

You can always check the current Typoscript in the Template module via the TypoScript Object Browser. However, to really get help you need to share your TypoScript language configuration. The behaviour you describe is not the default behaviour, so its configured somewhere.