[thelist] Multi-Language Sites (As in English & Spanish)

Administrative HQ english_offline at yahoo.com
Sat Mar 13 12:21:04 CST 2004


Hi.

A couple of points:

1. People who will choose to view your pages in
Spanish are probably using machines that are set up
for that (Spanish Windows or whatever). However, if
your home page is in English with a link to the
Spanish version, the link might appear wrong. We also
have pages in Hebrew, so many people might not even be
able to recognize the link as we're dealing with a
non-Latin alphabet. We got around that by using an
include file that calls a graphic with the name of
each language in it's own script and an image map for
the links. Thus the links look right wherever the user
is on the site and without regard to his OS, available
fonts, etc. (if he sees graphics...ALT's can be a
problem for non-English characters).

2. Always have your pages translated by a native
speaker of the language...unless you're really sure of
yourself. Also..specific to Spanish...the use of
familiar and polite forms of address has undergone a
lot of changes over the past 20 years or so and the
changes are not universal for Hispanic countries.
Check out Spanish sites and/or get competent language
advice so you present the level of formality you
really intend...as appropriate to your content.

Never try computer translation of pages.

Only a native speaker has the "feel" for the language.
 We were told on a couple of occasions that, even
though our Spanish was correct, the style or choice of
expressions gave a wrong impression and so on. It is
very dangerous for a foreigner to try to sound "in" or
"slangy" in a language not his own.

3. Use HTML entities for all non-English letters and
also include a metatag with the character encoding,
like:

<meta HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html;
charset=windows-1252">

You can't know what various browsers might do so give
them all the help you can.

DON'T FORGET TO CHECK RESULTS. I've seen simple things
like "upsidedown" exclamation marks come out looking
terrible even though they were encoded
correctly...just because some browser replaced a font
and made them look like "i"'s. Solutions to that kind
of thing are as hoc (inserting a space or leaving out
the punctuation, rephrasing, etc.).

4. I don't know what you're doing with the data base.
If, like ours, it records users (members) data, you
may have to do some extensive revisions so that it
will record the language (based on the page used to
enter the data) so that personalized pages or
automated e-mail responses will use the correct
language. Don't forget error notices if you have forms
to fill out and the like... a Spanish page must tell
the user IN SPANISH that he's entered an invalid
e-mail address or whatever.

What about routine issues such as redirects to a page
saying, "Thank you for contacting us", and the like?

There are many details to cover, depending on the
site.

Just some food for thought.

Good luck.
David
--- Brian <brian at brianreaves.com> wrote:
> Anyone care to share info on how best to add a
> second language to a 
> site? In this case it will be English & Spanish.
> 
> The site will be database driven by a CMS built on
> PHP & MySQL. Most 
> pages will be static and will not be updated very
> often... if ever.
> 
> If you need to know anything else to help, just ask.
> 
> TIA,
> B.
> -- 
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