Data Table and Translation.

Question

Edited by: Zabo on Jan 31, 2011 6:31 AM

Answer 1

Normally, you'll need humans to translate your data into some other language. There are automatic translation services out there and machine translation has come a long way, but it's still a long way from being exactly right particularly for something like a product name where a mis-step in translation is going to be very problematic.
You have a few different approaches to storing the translated data. If you are reasonably confident that you know what languages are needed (i.e. if you only sell in North America, English, Spanish, and French are going to cover the vast majority of potential consumers and it's probably reasonable to assume that you won't need a 4th language until the company expands), you could store the English, Spanish, and French translation in the PRODUCTS table, i.e.
CREATE TABLE products (
  product_id NUMBER PRIMARY KEY,
  description_english VARCHAR2(30),
  description_french VARCHAR2(30),
  description_spanish VARCHAR2(30)
);If you want more flexibility in storing translations for multiple languages (i.e. an international company where some products will be translated into many different languages and some will be translated into relatively few depending on where the product is marketed), you can store all the translations in a separate table, i.e.
CREATE TABLE products (
  product_id NUMBER PRIMARY KEY,
  description VARCHAR2(30)
CREATE TABLE product_translations (
  product_translation_id NUMBER PRIMARY KEY,
  product_id NUMBER REFERENCES products( product_id ),
  language VARCHAR2(5),
  translated_description VARCHAR2(30)
);Justin