[thelist] Multiple-language sites

[Katie Kearns]

I'm just beginning to plan a multiple-language site, which I have no
experience with so far. ;)  I was wondering if I could get some ideas about
ways to handle displaying text in about 10 different languages, and how to
determine what language I should serve to a particular user.

1) One person on my team suggested reading the language from the browser --
does this work often enough? Are there browser incompatibility issues, or
is it unlikely that users have configured this option?

2) Should I make separate physical pages for each language (and have the
nightmare of maintaining the links between all the languages) or find a way
to have each page know all 10 languages and just display the one that the
user wants at a time (would this take too long to load or be difficult to
maintain?).

3) Any tips for how/where to put a language selector into the interface?
Drop-down menu, little flags for countries, and a million other things have
been suggested. (I'm sort of throwing out the flag idea -- too many
countries share a language, and I'm sure the brits would be annoyed to have
to choose an american flag, or the canadians would be annoyed at clicking
on france, and justly so.)

If anyone has experience with massively multi language sites, please offer
up any tips you might have. It has to be a relatively simple site, since
this is just a fraction of my duties and I don't have time to code up
anything extravagant (and I don't have any control over the server -- just
the ability to upload HTML pages. I'm not even sure if I can upload more
than that.)

-Katie