What is the best way to embed a multilanguage option on a wesite

Question

I need to embed an option for viewers to see the site in German or Spanish.
Thanks for any recommendations.

Answer 1

When a website is managed by a CMS (content management system), it becomes possible to manage multiple languages easily.  CMS clients can select the languages they want to use on their websites and  translators can work on the content, all while the web developer sits on the beach drinking margaritas.
Illustrated below is the language selection menu my clients use to manage their language choices. I developed this system because my clients would come to me and say: "OK, now we want to add Russian" and I would then have to make lots of little changes throughout the website to accommodate it.
This method does require relational database features so content for a new language can be added on-the-fly.
In the chart above, "active" means that the language option is ready to be presented on the website. You can see that Russian has been selected but is not active, because translators are still working on the Russian material. Also note that the default language doesn't have to be English.
I use url parameters rather than sessions to pass language selection from page to page so if someone shares a link to a page, it will appear in the expected language, like this:
/topic/de/ufo_lands_in_berlin
To sanitize the url variable, I match the parameter to a lookup:
// WHAT LANGUAGE WILL BE USED
$safe = array("en","vi","zh","de","fr","es","he","nl","ru","ja");
if(in_array($lang_type[1], $safe)) {
$lang_select= $lang_types[1];
} else . . .
The languages for site visitors to choose from are presented like this:
//languages
$sql=$dbh->prepare("SELECT language.language_id, language.language_name FROM language, language_client WHERE language.language_id = language_client.language_id  AND active=1");
try{       
$sql->execute();
}catch(PDOException $e)
{echo $e;}
while($result = $sql->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)){
$i++;
$language_id=$result['language_id'];
$language_name=$result['language_name'];
$sel= ($language_id == $language_selected)? "style = 'color:red;text-decoration:none;'" : "style = 'color:#333;text-decoration:none;' ;
$language_block.="<a $sel href ='$domain/$language_id/$page_type2$pm2$pm3$pm4'>$language_name</a> | ";
$language_block = ($i > 1 )? "<p style='text-align:right'>$group_block$language_block</p>" : NULL;
Note that in the above, the language menu is displayed only when  two or more languages are active, so if, for some reason, the client decides they no longer wish to serve those who don't talk English good, the language menu will simply disappear.