Re: [PHP-I18N] Multilingual Web application - how to?

Ligaya Turmelle <lig@xxxxxxxx> · Mon, 11 Apr 2005 11:04:28 +1000

I am currently am using the IntSmarty extension to Smarty (you can get 
it and more information at 
http://www.coggeshall.org/oss/intsmarty/index.php/7/).  With it the 
translation(s) is stored as a flat file rather then a DB so it is easy 
to pass along to the translators and load.  I personally find it simple 
to use and if the page is in the utf8 character set, capable of any 
language (I have English and 2 Asian Languages).  As for the current 
language variable - it automagically loads the browsers current language 
from the preferences. Let me know if you would be interested in it (I 
have a _slightly_ hacked version to work with the utf8 character set 
rather then the latin character sets).

other options I know of - gettext, PEAR has a couple of classes for 
translations, and I also believe that there are a couple of classes at 
phpclasses.org.

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.

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.

3. Storing current language variable, possible solutions:
a. inside the URL like /en/news/
b. using cookies
c. using sessions
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

--
Respectfully,
Ligaya Turmelle

"Life is a game.... so have fun"

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