Translating pages can be a real pain. Personally I think the worst thing is the amount of clicks in takes when you need to translate a whole pagetree! Translating 10 pages can take up to 45 clicks through the List module! Can’t this be easier? Yes it can! TYPO3 by default comes with a Localization Overview module and can help to reduce the amount of clicks from 45 (or even more with more pages) to about 7!

In this tutorial I’m assuming you already have a website. You also need 2 or more languages. In this case we have our default language (English) with two other languages (Dutch and German). If you do not have these languages you might want to make them first, else the tutorial won’t be correct. To check your languages go to the List module, click on the root (world-icon) of the TYPO3 installation and see if there are ‘Website Languages’. (See screenshot 1)

Screenshot 1. Click to enlarge!

Got your languages? Good! Now where can we find this wonderful module? The Localization Overview module can be found within the Info module.

1. Go to the Info module in the left main menu.
2. Select the rootpage of your website.
3. Select 'Localization Overview' from the top dropdown menu.

You’ll now see an overview of your pages with the default language pagetitles, and perhaps the pagetitle you already translated.

Screenshot 2. Click to enlarge!

As you can see in the screenshot column 3 and 4 are the Dutch and German pagetitles and still empty. To translate the default pages into a new language we now check all pages we want to translate and hit the ‘Create new translation headers’ button. This way we can translate all pages in 1 screen!

Screenshot 3. Click to enlarge!

The edit screen allows you to insert a new pagetitle for the (in this case Dutch) language. You can also hide the page of choose a different language you want to translate but these options aren’t relevant in this tutorial. Once you’ve inserted all your new pagetitles save the page.

Beware that your TYPO3 login expires by default after 1 hour!
This should be no problem with TYPO3 4.x but it doesn't hurt to
save regularly when inserting many new pagetitle! Better to save
3 times than ending up expired and start all over again...

Once your done and saved the page you’ll return to the Localization Overview page. I would recommend inserting 1 language at a time, this way you don’t need to keep switching languages in you head or make sure you enter the right language into the right field.

Screenshot 4. Click to enlarge!

I hope this tutorial was clear and helpful. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask.