[thelist] multi-language website

[Eduardo Kienetz]

On 9/10/07, Carlo Bongiovanni <carlo.bongiovanni at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi folks,
> a customer asked to have his website in 5 different languages.
>
> my question is: how do i switch from one language to the other, in order to
> change menus and contents?
> which technology should i use? maybe xml..?
> i cannot imagine how to do at the moment...

If you are using PHP you should consider using gettext.
http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/gettext.html
You might also check other programming languages that also support gettext.

Basically there is a function that receives the original string, looks
for a global language variable and returns its translation.
E.g.: echo i18n('I am ') . $age . i18n(' years old');

Where I didn't have gettext I just created that i18n() function.
Pre-load all translation (for the chosen language), that is, don't
query database for each phrase translation.
Now, depending on how many phrases you have, you might want to
consider using a 'per page' translation index so you don't load all
strings.

-- 
Eduardo Bacchi Kienetz
LPI Certified - Level 2
http://www.noticiaslinux.com.br/eduardo/