Pre-select language (instead of "Language neutral") when creating a node?

Question

With core's Locale module you can enable Multilingual support for a content type. When creating/editing a node, this gives you a Language select list with all enabled languages and "Language neutral" as options.

The default (resp. first) value for this select list is always "Language neutral".

Is it possible to have a certain language as default value instead?

At best it would be a per-content-type setting, but I'm fine with a global one, too (e.g. always using the site-wide default language as default value).

Answer 1

The option for it is available in admin/config/regional/entity_translation

• The Entity Translation configuration page provide an interface to select default language for all content types separately

Answer 2

Of course you can do what you want. You should install the next module: internacionalization. This module will give you a better support for the content translation.

Instructions:

1. You will have to enable the following modules in the packet internazionalization:

   • Internationalition module
   • String translation
   • Multilingual content.

2. You will find in the content types a new vertical tab called multilingual settings. There you can configure the content type like you want.

Answer 3

We have different environments we push our configurations through, so I chose to codify this into the hook_enable() of one of my modules like this:

// Implements hook_enable().
function MY_MODULE_enable() {
    // Ensure that "entity translation" is setup so that my content item defaults to "EN" 
    // instead of "Language Neutral" @see /admin/config/regional/entity_translation
    if (module_exists('entity_translation')) {
        $variable_for_entity_trans_nodes = 'entity_translation_settings_node__CONTENT_TYPE';
        $trans_settings = variable_get($variable_for_entity_trans_nodes);
        $trans_settings['default_language'] = 'en';
        variable_set($variable_for_entity_trans_nodes, $trans_settings);
        watchdog("MY MODULE NAME", "Setting 'default_language' of '@variable' to 'en' at /admin/config/regional/entity_translation", array("@variable" => $variable_for_entity_trans_nodes), WATCHDOG_DEBUG);
    }
}

You'll need to update the things CAPITALIZED to suit.