No search results in translated language

[OsakaWebbie]

Am I missing something silly? When I search using the regular Joomla search, it doesn't seem to see translated content, but only the default language. I searched this forum, but the only posts mentioning similar problems involve 3rd party extensions like Virtuemart, which I do not have.

All the "Search - Jf..." plugins are enabled, and their settings look okay. For example, "Search - Jfcontent" is set as:

• Search Limit = 50
• Content Items = Yes
• Uncategoried Content = Yes (will probably change that to No once this is working, but...)
• Archived Content = Yes
• Active Language Only = No

When I search on something that exists in both English and Japanese versions of an article, like the starting time of an event, two results for each article show up, with one of them claiming to be from the translated language (in parentheses, after the section and category it says Japanese), but the content that appears is in English only, and the link goes to the English article, not the Japanese one. And if I search on a Japanese word, I always get no results at all. It's as if all my translations were merely copies of the English content, but that's not the case at all - everything is translated into Japanese. Any ideas?

[OsakaWebbie]

I just solved part of the problem (the bigger part). The template I am using has Joomla core code overrides, and a bug in one of them was causing error messages in the search form not to appear. I fixed that, and then discovered that it doesn't like two-character words as search criteria (minimum of three, which is pretty strict in Japanese, as most nouns are only one or two characters). If I satisfy that requirement by searching for longer Japanese phrases, I get results. But if English is the active language, the results are still listed in English, which is pretty funny, since the search criteria would not be found in the English text. Is that behavior normal?

[sparrow]

Same thing was going on on my site. My search results kept returning results in wrong language (always the same).
All my jf's including system jfrouter plugin ware set correctly.
I hope you have solved this issue, but for the others who have the same problem, here's my solution (maybe not the best):
1. my search form is standard mod_search;
2. add new menu item (it doesn't have to be in a menu module that shows on your site, just keep it published); it will have some id, I'll call it [searchitemid]
2. go to [joomlaroot]/modules/mod_search/tmpl/ and get default.php
3. edit default.php and change main form submit as:<form action="index.php?option=com_search&view=search&Itemid=[searchitemid]" method="post">

[searchitemid] is a good solution especially if you have several templates. This way search result can show in a template you choose for the 'search' menu item.

[OsakaWebbie]

Thanks for reviving this thread. But unless I did something wrong, your workaround doesn't work for me. I made a menu called hiddenmenu, whose module is not not enabled (so we won't see it). In it, I made one menu item that is a Search type. The menu item is published. Then I noted the item number and edited the core file as you suggested. But there is no change in the behavior.

I did notice something I didn't realize before. I first thought that the search results always link to the article in the default language, but that's not quite right - they always link to the article in whatever language you are currently using. The excerpt of the article that appears in the search results page is from the actual article that matched the search (some searches can give results in both languages), even if that language is different than the current one. But if you click on the title of such a search result, it will not switch languages and take you to the article you asked for - instead it shows you the corresponding article in the current viewing language.

[sparrow]

Hi, sorry for the late response.
when you say "not not enabled " do you mean that it is enabled (the module must be published).
I am using J1.5.14, so if you have arranged everything like I have written, maybe it is about Joomla version (mod_search may be different?)

[OsakaWebbie]

when you say "not not enabled " do you mean that it is enabled (the module must be published).

Sorry, that was a typing error - I meant "not enabled". You said in your instructions:

2. add new menu item (it doesn't have to be in a menu module that shows on your site, just keep it published); it will have some id, I'll call it [searchitemid]

My understanding was that "it" was referring to the menu item, not the module. I made a menu called "hiddensearch", and it is published. Then I made a search menu item within it called "search2", and it is published. But the module that calls the menu, called "hidden_search", is not published - if I have to publish the module, then it will show on my site, which of course I don't want, and you said was not necessary. If the module has to be published, then how do I keep it from appearing?

[OsakaWebbie]

Today I looked at this problem again, and it dawned on me that the problem Sparrow had must be different than the problems I'm having, because his/her workaround attacks the module, the problems I'm having are in the search component, not the module - it seems to be that either Joomfish doesn't fully handle the intricacies of the search results or there are design decisions I don't understand. (And oh, by the way, I updated both Joomla and Joomfish to the newest versions.) My problems happen regardless of whether I start the search in the module (I use YooSearch, but it doesn't matter), by doing an additional search directly in the component, or by doing a search and then switching viewing language while on the results page - the behavior is the same. So the module code is completely unrelated.

Permit me to include more explanation and screenshots - this post will be a bit long, but hopefully informative. (Scroll to the end if you want just the summary.) English is my default language, Japanese the translated one. I'm using the standard Jooma SEO functionality, but I have tested this with SEO off and I get the same reaction. You are welcome to try this yourself at http://oicjapan.org. Okay, first example: Let's say I'm looking at the site in Japanese, but I search on "Wednesday" (or I search on it and then switch to Japanese view while looking at the results page - it makes no difference which order I do it in). The search results page will look like this (I faked the mouse pointer image, but you get the idea):

It looks okay at first glance. But note the status bar at the bottom - the hyperlinks on the article titles all point to the Japanese version of the pages: "http://oicjapan.org/ja/..." (or without SEO, "http://oicjapan.org/index.php...lang=ja"), even though the word "Wednesday" only appears in English pages.

Next, we'll do the opposite, which highlights an additional problem. I'm looking at the site in English, and I search on the Japanese word for Wednesday. I get the following:

This page has more problems - instead of showing the titles and content excerpts from the actual Japanese articles that contain the Japanese word, it just shows the English - the only difference from if I search on the English word is that after the section and category it has the name of the language, indicating, I guess, that the real search result is the translated page - why won't it just show the real page instead? And just like the first example, the links are wrong - in this case they all point to the English pages (".../en/..." or "...lang=en").

Now I'll search for something that will appear in both languages, the time "10:15". In Japanese I see this:

which properly shows the results titles and excerpts in their real languages, but both titles still link to the Japanese version of the article.

Now I switch to English and it looks like this:

Doesn't that look strange to show the same page twice? And of course the links both point to the English, as well.

So there are two problems, with different kinds of behavior, and they may be unrelated, code-wise:

1. When viewing a results page using the default language of the site, for search hits that are on translated pages, the titles, excerpts, etc. of still shown only in the default language version of the page (with just the language name in parentheses), rather than the real language of the search hit.
2. In all cases, hyperlinks on search results point only to the page in the current viewing language, not the language that matches the actual result of the search.

Can anyone tell me whether these two behaviors are design decisions or bugs?

[cyclopeye]

I have the same behavior with yoosearch and joomfish, but no ideas.

[Excubitor]

I've got the same problems but only related to aceSEF when i disable aceSEF (and clear the cache/URLS) and just use the default Joomla SEF my search result show up in the right language.

[OsakaWebbie]

My problem happens with not only the default Joomla SEF, but even with SEF completely off. And don't be distracted by cyclopeye's comment about using YooSearch - the problem is in the Joomla search component, or in Joomfish's handling of that component.

Joomfish experts: Even if you are not having this problem yourself, can you suggest a method of troubleshooting for me?