i18N Internationalization Improvements for Sony Music

Sony Corporation engaged us to help plan and implement their multilingual configuration in a way that would improve Drupal as a whole, with an eye toward contributing all code back to the Drupal community. As they upgraded from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6, they saw a need for a more stable platform with enhanced internationalization support. The client’s strong understanding of, and commitment to, open source software paved the way for a successful collaboration.

To help stabilize the platform, we reviewed the code quality of the dozens of contributed modules Sony uses on more than fifty major artist websites. Using the Coder module and following up with manual reviews, we identified and resolved issues in dozens of contrib modules. For internationalization support, the Drupal 6 core featured many improvements. However, contributed modules were lagging behind. We ended up coding and contributing improvements for almost every module Sony was using including:

Along the way, we identified and addressed multiple core bugs and related core issues. P!nk's new multilingual website was the first rolled out using the new internationalization toolset and many others are slated for release. The result of this collaboration is that organizations both large and small requiring Drupal multilingual support now have a significantly improved set of tools with which to work. In myriad ways, Drupal is a more stable and powerful platform for sharing ideas and changing the world. You can read more about our Internationalization work in this case study on Drupal.org.