Is it possible to get separate links for DSpace pages in different languages?

[Carolyn Sullivan]

Hello,

I recently received this request from one of our users:

'One of my clients wants to link to your institutional repository, but the URL is the same in English and French. We believe that it automatically assumes the browser's language, which is not ideal. Is there any way to fix this to have two separate URLs?'

This isn't the way DSpace is currently set up: https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC7x/Multilingual+Support

I haven't dug into the guts of the code yet, but before I do get into it... does anyone know if (1) there's a fairly easy way to tweak it to have language codes specified in the URLs like Wikipedia does (ie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) or (2) Have you heard anything specific to UX peer-reviewed research about why it would be bad to detect the browser language and render it accordingly... or does anyone know why the programmers chose to have it detect browser language?

Thanks,

Carolyn.

[DSpace Technical Support]

Hi Carolyn,

Currently, this isn't possible in DSpace.  However, it does seem like it should be possible to achieve by customizing the code.

In the current DSpace 7 & 8 User Interface, the language is determined by checking the user's cookie or their browser settings.  This is done here: 

https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/blob/main/src/app/core/locale/locale.service.ts#L69

So, it should be possible to modify the code the check for a parameter in a URL or similar.  But, that feature just doesn't exist yet.

You are welcome to submit a feature request to https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/issues   All new features are built by volunteers, so we can try to locate a volunteer interested in building this feature out once it's described in a ticket.

Tim