Some advice! Multiple Language Support

PHP
1

Hello All,

Long time since i been on these forums, so hey again :smiley:

I’ve recently built a site just HTML/CSS/PHP. Its not a big site, just around 30 pages or so. However my client did not state that they now need it also in German!? Its currently english.

I’m really not sure on the approach i should take for this. Pretty much ALL the information which is on the site is loaded from a database.

I’m not sure if i could use some kind of translation tool to convert it to german when its pulled from the database?

Or do i need to add a new database and translate all the data? :frowning: (please don’t tell me this)

All help is appreciated thanks.

Kind Regards,

2

Even if you could translate on the fly, I would strongly advise against this just from a performance point of view. It is much more efficient to:

  1. Determine your locale/language
  2. Extract the text from the database, based on the required locale/language

It might be more time consuming to have to write all the content in German, it will definitely benefit you and the client in the longer run…

3

do ~not~ use automated translation, have the site owner provide you with the german copy

the changes to your database tables to store multiple languages will be straightforward

4

I enjoy berries!

OK. So we established NOT to use machine translation.

Are you simply translating? Or are you localizing the data on the site too?

5

Ok thanks guys, two copies of the database it is! burry’s head in keyboard

Steve

edit: lol nub “berries” to “burry’s”

6

Well, translating simply involves changing the textual data on the site. Whereas localizing, is providing data that is location specific. Think along the lines of Google and how it provides search data based on location.

If you are attempting simply to do the former then - as others mentioned using tables will suffice - however, if you are wanting to do the latter, then thats an entirely different scenario.

7

@wackyjoe,

I’m not entirley sure what you mean?