Multilingual Search

When to Use

Use this when building search for multilingual Drupal sites.

Decision

Setting	Where	Purpose
"Item language" field	Index → Fields	Add for faceting/filtering by language
"Language (with fallback)" processor	Index → Processors	Handles translation fallback logic
"Content Translation" datasource setting	Index → Datasources	Configure which languages to index
search_current_language module	Contrib	Auto-filter results to current interface language

Pattern

Search API stores one indexed item per language per entity. A node with 3 translations creates 3 index items. You do NOT need separate indexes per language.

Solr multilingual: Since search_api_solr 8.x-2.x, the formerly separate search_api_solr_multilingual module is merged into the main module. No separate install needed.

Solr applies language-specific analyzers automatically: - Different stemmers per language - Language-specific stop words - Compound word splitting for German - CJK tokenization for Chinese/Japanese/Korean

The jump-start configsets are multilingual by default.

Common Mistakes

• Wrong: Installing search_api_solr_multilingual separately → Right: It's been merged into search_api_solr. Just use the main module.
• Wrong: Forgetting to add language filter to View → Right: Without a language filter, results from all languages appear. Add "Item language" filter or use search_current_language.
• Wrong: Mixing Language (with fallback) processor + Solr fulltext without testing → Right: Known issues exist. Test thoroughly.

See Also

• Solr Best Practices
• Processor Recommendations