Denis Gerasimov wrote:
Hello list,
I need to develop a multilingual web site and I am looking for the best way
of handling this task. There are three main issues I know:
1. Storing multilingual data in a database. Possible solutions I know:
a. many tables, one per each supported language, e.g. news_en, news_de.
b. one table having many columns with translations, e.g. (id, date, text_en,
text_de)
We use MySQL 4.1 as a back-end.
what about 1 table, 3 columns:
translatekey (varchar) - string to translate
lang - lang code/id/name
translation (varchar/text) - translated string
2. Multilingual HTML templates, possible solutions:
a. one generic template for everything, one per each language, like
contents_en.tpl.html, contents_de.tpl.html
b. many localized templates for each page, e.g news_en.tpl.html,
news_de.tpl.html
Template engine is Smarty.
using Smarty I sometimes assign an assoc array of translated strings:
$Lang['yes'] = 'yessiree';
$Lang['no'] = 'nocando';
then in Smarty:
<div class="LangExample">
'yes' is {$Lang.yes},
'no' is {$Lang.no}
</div>
3. Storing current language variable, possible solutions:
a. inside the URL like /en/news/
best in terms of SEO.
b. using cookies
handy for presistence.
c. using sessions
provides cleaner URLS.
I see no reason to do all 3.
Web server is Apache2+mod_rewrite with PHP5
What are pros and cons for each solution? What are other possible solutions
for the above issues?
Best regards, Denis Gerasimov
Outsourcing Services Manager,
VEKOS, Ltd.
www.vekos.ru
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