Use multiple languages in events

Support for UTF-8 character encoding is built in to Trumba® Connect. In all of the fields where you provide text, you can type non-English characters, including double-byte characters typical of many Asian languages.

This extensive ability to customize the Trumba Connect solution means that you can tailor your calendar visitors' experiences to reflect the languages they speak.

Some of the fields you can customize with non-English text include:

• Event fields, such as description, location, and notes.
• Calendar view field labels.

  Which calendar views let me display, hide, and re-label fields?

• Event detail field labels.

  How do I customize event detail views?

• Custom field names.

  How do I create custom fields?

• Registration form questions

  How do I create custom registration questions?

  Tip Use conditional questions to let registrants choose a preferred language. Learn more.

• Event submission form instructions and field names.

  How do I get an event submission form?

• Header, footer, and other labels for control and promotion spuds.

  How do I add and customize control and promotion spuds?

• Banners and footers for calendar and event emails.

  How do I add custom email banners and footers?

• Field labels and contents for custom object views and spuds.

  How do I publish and customize custom objects?

Note There are numerous Trumba user interface elements that you cannot customize. For example, calendar and event action links, such as Subscribe, Add to My Calendar, and Forward to Friends, will always be in English.

To get a fuller sense of what customizing for multiple languages involves, read the following case studies and implementation tips.

• Case study: Public libary
• Case study: Community organization
• Tips for managing non-English content

Case study: Public library

• Description
• Some implementation details

Description On its main Trumba calendar, a large urban public library includes events in English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Russian. While the field names are all in English, event titles and summaries are language-appropriate.

Library events calendar showing Chinese and English events

Visit the library's website

In addition to the main calendar, on language-specific sections of its website, the library publishes separate calendars for each language.

As the following image shows, in these language-specific calendars, the library customized:

• Event field names (1).
• Control spud labels (2).

Tips

• Calendar actions (Print, Subscribe) and event actions (Add to My Calendar, Remind Me By Email) cannot be customized and are always in English (3). You can hide calendar and event actions if you prefer. See the Tips section below.
• When you customize a calendar view, you can replace the default Prev and Next paging buttons with your own custom buttons (4).

Language-specific library events calendars

Some library implementation details

• The library created a separate calendar for each language.
• By assigning a unique color to the non-English calendars, the library made events in alternate languages easy to identify on the main calendar.

  How do I assign colors to calendars?

  

  Unique calendar colors make it easy to identify non-English events.

• The library created event templates based on event type not language. For example, templates include Author Readings, Book Group, and Story Time.

  This means that most event fields display in English, even on the language-specific calendars, but some customization is still possible.

  

  Event detail view of a Spanish-language Story Time event type

• By devoting separate calendars to each non-English language, the library was able to customize each calendar's event detail view. Visitors who view event details from a language-specific versus the main calendar have different experiences.

  

  The library customized event detail views for the language-specific calendars so at least some field and action names reflect the calendar language.

Case study: Community organization

• Description
• Some implementation details

Description A regional community organization with a bilingual website provides English and Spanish versions of its events calendar.

As the image shows, calendar field labels and event titles are in Spanish (1). Calendar actions (Print, Subscribe) and event actions (Add to My Calendar, Remind Me By Email) cannot be customized and are always in English (2). You can hide calendar and event actions if you prefer. See the Tips section below.

Tip When you customize a calendar view, you can replace the default Prev and Next paging buttons with your own custom buttons (3).

Spanish language events calendar on a community organization website

Some community organization implementation details

• The organization created separate calendars, one for English-language and one for Spanish-language events.
• By choosing the Classic Table calendar view, the organization was able to select which event fields to display in the calendars and to assign language-appropriate field names.

  Which calendar views let me choose and name the fields to display?

• To provide language-appropriate event field names, the organization created an event template for each calendar and a separate set of custom fields for each template.

  Tip You can create only one event template and still use language-appropriate field names. Learn more in the Tips section.

  

  Spanish-language field labels in an event detail view

• To encourage public event submission by both Spanish and English speakers, the organization provided two language-appropriate event submission forms.

  In event submission forms, only a few built-in field labels, such as Start date, Time, and Duration, cannot be customized.

  

  Spanish-language event submission form

  Note While the submission form itself is very customizable, text in the default form buttons, error messages, and on the preview page will always be in English. (Note that you can replace the default submission form buttons with custom language-appropriate buttons. Learn how.)

Tips for managing non-English content

Based on our experience with existing multi-lingual implementations, we make the following recommendations:

• Create a separate calendar for each language.

  Benefits of having separate calendars include the ability to:

  • Share each calendar with an editor who can add, update, and approve events in the appropriate language.
  • Set up each main calendar and its corresponding control and promotion spuds with language-appropriate labels and options.
  • Create event submission forms customized for each language.
  • Customize separate sets of calendar and event emails with language-appropriate banners and footers.

  Note If all of your events are relevant for all languages you support, the downside of separate calendars is that you have to re-create the same event on each calendar.

• If it's a priority to customize event field names by language, you might want to set up separate language-specific event templates.

  Note If you support multiple languages and you have several event types that each require their own unique set of fields, it may not be realistic to create multiple language-specific templates for each event type. You might just have to customize calendar and event detail fields where you can. That's the approach used by the library in the case study above.

• If you support only two languages and you create a separate calendar for each language, you may be able to use just one event template that includes fields customized for both languages.

  To use this approach, take the following steps:

  • Create two versions of each custom field, one for each language.
  • For each custom field, in the Security section of the custom field form, under Visibility, clear Allow this field to be published.

    

  • On the publish settings page for each calendar, in the Publish Settings section, for Display unpublished fields, select the custom fields that reflect the calendar's language.

    

• In your calendars and event details, the calendar action and event action links always appear in English. If you prefer not to show the English action links, you can hide them.

  In the Publishing Control Panel, click the Calendar Spuds tab, then follow the instructions below:

  • To hide the calendar action panel in all calendar views, under Main Calendar Spud, click Edit Settings & Styles. Click the Calendar Actions Panel tab. Under Styles, for Display, select hide.
  • To hide event actions for each calendar view, under each view, click Edit Settings & Styles. In the Event Actions section, for Event Action display, select None.
  • To hide event actions in event detail view, under Event Detail View, click Edit Settings & Styles. In the Footer section, for Event Action display, select No for each option you want to hide.