Drupal 7 / Ubercart 7 - Choosing the Right Language Selector

Drupal core 7.67 / Ubercart 7.x-3.13 

Choosing the Right Language Selector

Our multi-lingual site needs to work correctly, by which I mean that the user must be presented an environment in their selected language at all  times.

When you enter our website, the interface presented is English, and one of the first things the user sees upon entering is a language selector:

As you can see, the three languages offered are:

• Traditional Chinese (for customers primarily outside Mainland China)
• Simplified Chinese (for customers primarily inside Mainland China)
• English (for everyone in the world...hopefully)

Now, the way that translations work in Drupal is each node created is given a unique number, which is then related in the back end.

What the switcher is supposed to do is signal to Drupal that all  interface elements (menus, for example) are to be translated and to navigate to whatever node the switcher points to.

If the switcher gets it wrong, the site doesn't work - something we struggled with for a few days.

Eventually, the switcher that worked for us is this one:

The switchers that did not work for us were:

These switchers introduced copious errors in the Administration Interface, and/or bizzarre site behaviour that made the site translate incorrectly.