[thelist] Multiple-language sites

[Chris George]

Hi Katie,

I have experience with the Design aspect of implementing a
multi-language site.  About a year and a half ago, we had the
opportunity/mandate/money to develop a 16(!!) language site.  In the
end, due to circumstances we ended up with 3 production language:

English
Français
Español

Which don't need any special alphabets.  We also had Polish, Russian,
Japanese etc. to flex the european markets.  The way the site was set up
was a bit archaic - other than the final result, there was one page for
each action (a combination of vanilla HTML and Java widgets) which added
up to roughly 400 pages per language (so ~1600 pages for just 3
languages).  This amounted to 3 languages that are never, ever synched
100% with each other and ECO's that take 3x as long to complete.  LOTS
of Advil use.

Don't do this. :-)

Character sets are extremely important to get right for the non-standard
alphabets.  Without them, This is all they'll see:
!@#$@#$@#$%%^&^&*@#%!@^&*))$#%##&))@!!#@#_)^@)(@#*(

I certainly don't have the best way, or the only way, but keep these in
mind:

  - We never found a reliable way to detect peoples' browser languages.
  - If you have a 'reasonable amount' of pages, I'd suggest a database
lookup of dictionary words.  That way pretty much any page can be built
from dynamic data.
     - In having said that, different languages can have extremely
varying word lengths.  One page in english may look like crap in
German.  And probably will.  Account for this by actually changing the
words (and possibly risking skewing the meaning slightly) independent of
the source language.
     - Local vocabularies can play a part depending on the subject of the
site.  Translation companies can usually take this into account, but is
worth noting anyhoo.
  - Our language selector ran across the bottom of the page, and that
seemed to work good enough.  Once the user was on their comfortable
language, they usually bookmarked it and rarely veered back to their
original language.
  - Be sure to index your site's different languages with that languages
respective search engine - helps eliminate strays as well.
  - _Don't_ use flags.  Quebecois speek French, France people speak
French, Swiss people speak French Spanish, German, etc...
  - I'm going to recommend Lionbridge for the translation services.  They
rawkd for us.  Very supportive and they have extremely knowledgeable
technical staff.

Katie, I hope this helps a bit.  It's a bit daunting, but the end result
can be pretty amazing.

Chris.