Structuring a multi language site

Hi
I need to build a simple HTML site with pages in 3 languages, English, French and Italian. What is the best structure to use?
Thanks
Tim

That's how our developers do it, but I just want to throw in
one other detail. The help output for each language has to be in a
separate directory. So if you have 5 languages, you'll have 5
directories. It's up to the developers to code the app so it
detects the browser language, then looks in the appropriate help
directory when the user clicks your help link or icon.
--Ben

Similar Messages

How to create a multi-language site?

Hi,
what's the smartest way to create a multi-language site with the naviation menus only in English OR French OR German…? By creating one site and duplicate the .muse file?
Thanks a lot!

No
Depending on how simple your site is you can get away with it easy with common languages based on latin all in CSS and Javascript as the words within the sentences will mostly be in the same places. For other languages such as Japanese to English or right to left languages you would be better building different templates in a subdirectory as links and other things will start to move around.
You also have to design around multi languages as well, as words in other languages might be longer and could break your design.

How to design multi-languages site?

Hi:
I try to store user profile in the database. Since chinese is double
byte, and english is not.
Does anyone tell me what is advantage and disadvantage to choose
defining a user table for all the users or to defining two tables,
one for double byte user, one for english user?
Thanks in advance.
li

hello,
there are several ways to do it. i guess the most practical way is to actually use the XML customization feature that is available with reports or use translation hub, but since you stated that you are using 6i this is not an option as translation hub is only available from 9i onwards.
however the XML customziation approach would work for 6i as well. essentailly you create your report and make sure all your boilerplate text items have a uniqe name. then you can create a customization file for each language that then changes the content of each of the poilerpalte items. those can be applied at runtime or in batch.
as for the scheduling, you would need to either pass in a parameter naming the customization file or simply run the correct language version of the report.
thanks,
ph.

Multi-language advise

I need to create a multi-language sites. I have two
possibilities in organizing my site
1. I can create the following structure
French
English
Spanish
and the html files per subject undeneath
2. or create the structure with the subjects
HomeGardenLiving...
and the different version of the html files per language
underneath
What's more convenient for a future maintenance?
Thanx

NoveAndreas wrote:
> I need to create a multi-language sites. I have two
possibilities in
> organizing my site
>
> 1. I can create the following structure
> French
> English
> Spanish
> ...
>
> and the html files per subject undeneath
>
> 2. or create the structure with the subjects
>
> HomeGardenLiving
[/bul
> let]...
>
> and the different version of the html files per language
underneath
>
> What's more convenient for a future maintenance?
> Thanx
In terms of structuring the website, there is no difference;
pick whichever
is more suitable to you. My view would be that if the
language specific
versions of the website have (or may potentially have)
differences in
structure (e.g, the English version has a 'Flowers' page but
the French
version does not), then structure it by language then
subject. If there is
no difference in structure between languages, then
subject/language would be
just as good.
HTH,
Pete.
Peter Connolly
http://www.acutecomputing.co.uk
UK

Multi-Language content on BC

Can anyone share any experience with building multi-language sites on BC? I have a client in Eastern Canada that needs a site in French and English. Is the best approach to create two complete sites in different directories such as: www.mysite.com/fr/ www.mysite.com/en/ Can anyone provide sample sites where this has been done in BC? Are there other CMS's that are better equipped for multi-language sites? Thanks for your help!

Hi,
A good example is Dr.Wheatgrass site which provide multiple sites (.ca, .us. ,etc) and separate accounts to cover different countries and languages.
- http://drwheatgrass.com/
Set-up stemming from this article: http://kb.worldsecuresystems.com/521/bc_521.html#main_How_to_deal_with_a_global_audience_- _multi-currency_and_multi-lingual_sites
Kind regards,
-Sidney

Multi-language spell check?

Hello all,
new to Dreamweaver (CS5, Mac), but with 15+ years of experience with HTML and GoLive, I have some difficulties finding my way. Not all my q.s are answered in the help, The Missing Manual or the FAQs. Like this one:
I have a multi-language site, and even some of the individual pages are multi-language. Is it true that the DW CS5 spellchecker gets the dictionary to use for the check from the prefs? I have a language info in all of my pages (<meta http-equiv="Content-language" content="...">); is it true that DW does not use this information?
To be specific: If I want to check several pages, some of which are all-English, others all-German, it looks as if I have to change the preferences between spell checks; is that true?
It also looks as if, when a page contains more than one language, I have no real check option at all; true?
Thanks for any enlightenment you may be able to give; so far, the DW experience has not been pure joy. Some things were *so* much easier and faster in GoLive! (Well, not multi-language spell checks, I concede that.)
Lutz Pietschker

No, you cannot get around switching prefs for the language when switching language. It would be good if it could work like in InDesign where you can mix languages however you like and always have it spellcheck in the correct language. But it cannot.
(I agree to your last paragraph - many things were so much easier, flexible and faster in GoLive - and I haven't even mentioned the site management which as I see it is next to non-existent in DW).

Multi language website without a database?

I would like to make a website in norwegian and english (perhaps also in spanish).
I use DW5 but I don't have much experience with databases (so I don't use this in this case).
Are there any way to make multi language site - without make a copy of the whole site and correct it? Of course I will have to change the text in the webpages, but I'm more thinking of the dwt-(template-files) and css-files...Not making new dwt and css file but keep them, and correct text pages.
Could I use some kind of script?
Is this this enough information to understand what I want to do?
Hope for the best
Morten

Hi
Yes, there is enough information to say that there is no 'magic' script that will do what you wish and that the way you describe, (create separate pages for each language) is the only way to do this if you do not wish to use a database.
You could use Google's translate to do the translation when the specific language is selected, but in my experience the translations are only usable as an approximation, and definitely should not be used on a professional web site as the actual content.
PZ
www.pziecina.com

Multi language web site

Multi language web site
What is the best way to have my web site switchable (initially from links on the main index.html page) between different languages?
Do I simply clone the English version (including all the sub-directories and structure) into a sub-directory and translate each page and put a link on the main index.html page to a translated copy of the index.html page in the German sub-directory
That would mean I effectively have two websites to maintain.
More when it is translated into more languages.
Currently all the English pages are made from a template (dwt file)
I assume this adds a level of complication to the design.
Or is there a better/easier way?
thanks

This is a website that the client did not continue with http://ncca.com.au/new/, hence it has not been finished.
In the top right hand corner are two flags, Dutch and English. By clicking on a flag, the language session variable is changed. This session variable is used througout the website to determine the content as in
if ($_SESSION['lang'] == 'en') {include("home_en.php");}
if ($_SESSION['lang'] == 'nl') {include("home_nl.php");}
If there are more languages it is better to use the select switch rather than an if statement.

Multi-language CF sites

Hello~
I was just wondering if anyone has suggestions for building out large-scale sites in multiple languages. I have look at the Google Translation API, but I'm not sure if it will do the trick or not. Any suggestions would be great. Thanks!
KC

My suggestion is to first find a good translations service. The hardest part of any multi-national site is
making sure your translations are correct. Otherwise you end up with the chinese lawn mower manual effect.
You get: "Important: To sever limb - Insert here." [there was a picture of a bloody detached limb next to an arrow pointing to the bottom of a picture of the lawn mower.]
Yes this did get the point across but a simple "CAUTION: Keep hands and feet away from the bottom of the mower while in use." would have been better and less morbid.
That was from an actual manual I once had.
Just check out Engrish.com to get an idea of how bad it can get. Tracking your translations is important but if they are not correct in the first place then at best you end up on someone elses Engrish.com style site, at worst you loose all of your customers because they think your product will bring their dead ancestors back to life.
http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/ancestor.asp
-Joe

Multi language, how to approach this?

Hi everyone,
I have a website on which I want to offer multi language, but no idea what is the best way to do this.
There 2 plans I have:
1:
Of course all content (text) is in a database.
If a user would want a different language, the user would click on a link/flag, this would put the requested language in a session variable, for example: session.language = "es"
In the database I would have 2 columns (every language has 1 column) and then select the text which belongs to 'es'
Every page would then do a request to the database to get the text beloging to the session.language.
PROS: Relatively simple to implement
CONS: SEO wise I don't think this could be very good. http://www.domain.com/page.cfm would give an english text or spanish text (or other language). Google will not add duplicate URL's
2:
Do something with http://www.domain.com/en/page.cfm for english and http://www.domain.com/es/page.cfm for english.
With a URL rewrite rule the language value in the URL http://www.domain.com/en/page.cfm would actually be a page http://www.domain.com/page.cfm?language=en
The url.language variable will then select the correct language from the database.
PROS: Unique URL for each language. Good for SEO and Google indexing.
CONS: A bit more difficult to implement. (I think)
Or does anyone have other / better ideas?
Thanks!!

You kind of mix two different considerations partially in your two options here: how to identify the language (mentioned in both points), and how the data is stored (only mentioned in the first one).
We use the second approach for identifying which language site one is on, except we use a subdomain instead of an element in the path (eg: we have es.domain.com, fr.domain.com etc, rather than www.domain.com/es/ and www.domain.com/fr/). However I think that's neither here nor there. The rewrite is simple to set up, and a one-off, so there's no real penalty there.
As for how the data is stored, we've got a bit of a hotch-potch depending on which text it is. Structural stuff which is fairly static (eg: in the breadcrumbs the text saying "You are here") we have in .properties files. Slightly more frequently "managed" text like SEO-sensitive stuff is stored in a slightly different text-file-based system, due to who maintains said content. Other (more volatile) content still is managed via a CMS. This is basically down to which dept manages which text (as well as legacy issues like different people having different ideas as to how things ought to be done,if I'm honest). The text-file-based stuff is loaded once at app-start-up, and the DB-stored stuff is called as necessary (with some CF & DB-side caching depending on what it is).
The text-file-based stuff is applied to a page in the way Steve suggests. The DB stuff is just output as per normal fetched-query content.
You might want to read up on how Java handles this sort of thing, to get a fairly coherent picture of an accepted / standardised approach to such things. Start with http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/ResourceBundle.html and google "java ResourceBundle".
Adam

Structure Suggestions for International Sites

The current CQ implementation suggests that you lay out international sites by language.
So you have your main site foo and beneath it would be en, de, es to represent all the different languages that the site would be in. Once you really start to get international this structure starts to fall apart. Spanish in Spain is different then the Spanish in Mexico and the French in Africa is different then the French spoken in Canada.
So we are considering a structure as follows:
content/foo
ca
en
fr
mxes
eses
Any feedback from others over their implementations, pro's and con's would be appreciated.
-jason

Hi Jason,
you can name the site whatever you want. To my knowledge importat thing in terms of multi-language support is the site language specified in properties. You may not see the difference in built-in languages (de, fr, es, ...) but once you try to switch to something that is not there out of the box and use the translator to manage keywords you will see the difference. If you have issues with EN-UK and US and others I would go with structure that Rudy pointed out
/Site
/English(US)
/English(Canada)
and it is up to you if you use short iso codes or longer description. Just make sure that you specify the site language in site properties (advanced tab)
Hope this helps a little.
Jan

Creating a multi-language website on Dreamweaver-cs4

Hi,
What would be the best aproach to create a multi-language website ( max 10 html pages , not a portal ) on CS4.
I had Joomla in my mind but I want to learn Dreamweaver way.
Should create different folders for each additinonal language and copy the default files and edit them accordinly? ( Default will be English, Turkish and German might be other options )
Thanks a lot

Watch for site management issues.
Here's a good reference: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/ora_dw_cs4_mm.html
You might have a home page that appears in all languages, linking to each section of your site. Each section might be in a folder named like "IVFDeutsch" for the German version, etc., and the 'home page' for German could be www.yoursitename.com/IVFDeutsch/index.html so you would have an index page in each subsection.
Consider using Templates, and a nav for each section that is presented in the language of the section, to treat your other language speaking visitors as well as possible.
You have many decisions and possibilities..have fun with the site.
Z

Multi-language support for iPod Touch keyboard

"There might be an app for that" sounds good, but trying to find anything on the Apple site is a nightmare. I'm simply looking for a multi-language touch keyboard application for my iPod Touch.
I type quite a bit in German and need to easily switch between English (Qwerty) and German keyboards.
Does anyone know of an App for this? If so, could you please post the URL?
Thanks

It's built in to your iPod Touch. See page 30 of the User Guide.

Multi language texts

I am building a multi language application in Apex.
I would like to retrieve data from tables and return the text in the language of the user connecting the web site. Has Apex a standard solution for this? If not, what is the best idea to use?
I am thinking of this solution:
- content_table_1(content_1_id, description, message_id)
- content_table_2(content_2_id, description, message_id)
- content_table_n(content_n_id, description, message_id)
- message_table(message_id, language_id, message_text)
Content tables can be all sorts of tables in my data model. This solution enables me to reuse messages in different content tables. In queries I have to get the message text with the content. This will work, but is this the best solution?
Alternatively I could also do this:
- content_table_1(content_1_id, description)
- message_table_1(content_1_id, language_id, message_text)
- content_table_2(content_2_id, description)
- message_table_2(content_2_id, language_id, message_text)
- content_table_n(content_n_id, description)
- message_table_n(content_n_id, language_id, message_text)

Hi Arie,
That's correct. APEX can only translate things he "knows". APEX doesn't "know" your own data.
That's way I mentioned this:
APEX can also give you the language of the browser for ex. so you can put the right value in your where clause.Whatever method you chose to retrieve the language, to get your data displayed in the right language you have to let your select statement know what you want.
For WC2006 I stored the language in an Application Item and used in my selects WHERE language = :MY_LANGUAGE_ITEM
Does this clarify my post more?
Dimitri

Multi language blog

Hi,
Im a newby and would like some help on creating a multi language blog, I already madehttp://web.mac.com/bobsyruncle/AluminiumGieterij_Declercq_/Aluminium_Gieterij_Home.html
but it does not look like I would like, I want to give the option to the visitor to choose language on the first pge, how would I go bout doing that?
Thanks for your help
Joe

Hi,
Just solved my problem by duplicating the site, one in French and one in Dutch with a hyperlink from one to the other
see
http://web.mac.com/bobsyruncle/AluminiumGieterij_Declercq_N.V./Aluminium_Gieterij_Home.html

Structuring a multi language site

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