I Just Want to Change That One Word!

If you develop Drupal sites for clients, then you've no doubt been requested to change some of the default language found in Drupal core and/or contributed modules. For example, instead of "My account", your client wants it to read "User info". Or instead of "Create content", they request "Add stuff".

When I first started developing Drupal site a few years ago, I would actually (the faint of heart should avert your eyes) hack core or the modules to get it done. I very quickly learned my lesson and changed over to the Locale module (this was in the days of 4.7). While this was better, it was meant for full language translations and not for site-specific custom text.

Luckily, with Drupal 6, we have the String Overrides module. This module was intended exactly for this purpose - to change Drupal's default text to suit a particular site's needs. It still uses Drupal translation system underneath, but it is a little bit more lightweight than a full translation modules.

Be warned, though, it can still mess with you. For example, I recently wanted to change the term, "List price" in Ubercart to "MSRP". When I added this change to the String Overrides module configuration, nothing happened. I looked again at where "List price" was being printed out and it looked like this: "List price: $400". So, I tried entering "List price:" and "MSRP:" (note the colon) - still nothing. Finally, I tried "List price: " and "MSRP: " (note the colon and the space) - luckily that worked. Depending on how the string is defined in the module, you may have to be very particular in how you try to translate it.