How to make mulitlingual website?

[madsgormlarsen]

Hi

I need to make at mulitlingual website, with php amd mysql, and I am
looking for tutorils or books that explains about how to best do this.
Hop ypu have some suggestions as to were I can find information about
this.

Mads

[Riddic]

ma************@ gmail.com wrote:

Hi

I need to make at mulitlingual website, with php amd mysql, and I am
looking for tutorils or books that explains about how to best do this.
Hop ypu have some suggestions as to were I can find information about
this.

Mads

You could look into existing projects that offer it, phpMyFAQ for example
(www.phpmyfaq.de). Every bit of "Text" that pops up on the website later it
reads from a (big) associative array, specified by files (one for each
language) in the /lang/-directory. Depending on which language you choose,
the specific file gets included.

[madsgormlarsen]

Should one place all the text in one big table, or is i better to place
it in several tabels. Should one make 4 colums one for each language,
or 4 rows one for each language?

[Jeff North]

On 27 Jun 2005 23:54:43 -0700, in comp.lang.php
"ma************ @gmail.com" <ma************ @gmail.com> wrote:

| Should one place all the text in one big table, or is i better to place
| it in several tabels. Should one make 4 colums one for each language,
| or 4 rows one for each language?

I use:
CREATE TABLE `usr_languages` (
`pageName` varchar(25) default '',
`itemNo` int(11) default '0',
`en` text,
`fr` text,
`it` text
) TYPE=MyISAM COMMENT='differ ent languages';

only because I can immediately see if I have not include text for a
particular language and a particular entry.

pageName: which page this text appears on
itemNo: order of items to be read and placed on page.
en/fr/it: the different languages.

I haven't optimised this as yet so the 'text' field is probably
overkill and a varchar(255) would suffice.
---------------------------------------------------------------
jn******@yourpa ntsyahoo.com.au : Remove your pants to reply
---------------------------------------------------------------

[Jerry Stuckle]

ma************@ gmail.com wrote:

Should one place all the text in one big table, or is i better to place
it in several tabels. Should one make 4 colums one for each language,
or 4 rows one for each language?

Think - normalize, normalize, normalize.

Think - 4 columns - one for each language. What happens if you need to
add a fifth language? How much code will you have to change?

Several tables - again, if it's one for each language, how much code
will you have to change? Probably not as much. But in either case you
have to change the database.

One big table - I doubt it will be "big". "Big" in database-ese often
means terabytes. A couple of megabytes is nothing.

I would put things in one table with a layout similar to:

id: integer
language: char(2)
Actual info: text

Integer is not an auto-increment. Rather, it is some id you generate
for each page. The combination of id and language (2 character ICANN
country codes works great in most cases) is used for the primary key.

In you code for a specific page, the id never changes, the language is
based on what they select.

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Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
js*******@attgl obal.net
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[madsgormlarsen]

Ok, thanks. Have you seen a tutorial / book or something like that
about the subject?

[madsgormlarsen]

Ok, thanks, I am going to try it. Have any of you seen a tutorial /
book or something like that about the subject? - perhaps from wrox.

[madsgormlarsen]

Is what you are suggesting something along these lines?

or do you agree with Jeff?

CREATE TABLE `usr_languages` (
`pageName` varchar(25) default '',
`id` int(11) default '0',
`language` char(2),
`Actual_info` text,
)

[Chung Leong]

Well, it all depends on what your site is and what the languages are.
Localization is a very large topic. You should spend some time looking
at the big picture first before diving into the technical nitty-gritty.
For example, if your site accepts user input, you have to think about
how to deal with the differences in notation and format. Just yesterday
I accidently wrote out a check for $9800 because the application
doesn't understand that 98,00 means 98.00.

Page layout can also be a challenge. A layout that works for one
language might not for another. In English, for example, you could have
something like

I would like to buy a[LIST BOX]

A page design that requires the list box label to be on the left side
would be bad, as the object might need to appear at the beginning or
the middle of the sentence in other languages. Sometimes a problem
could be as simple as not being able to fit a word into a given space.

The difficulty of handling multiple languages in a single codebase is
why people often build a separate site per language instead.

[Jerry Stuckle]

ma************@ gmail.com wrote:

Is what you are suggesting something along these lines?

or do you agree with Jeff?

CREATE TABLE `usr_languages` (
`pageName` varchar(25) default '',
`id` int(11) default '0',
`language` char(2),
`Actual_info` text,
)

No, I do not agree with Jeff. His design, while it works, makes the code very
difficult to modify should he ever want to add a new language. To do so would
require changing the database - and an examination of all the code which
accesses the database. No, all the code would not HAVE to be modified - but all
would have to be inspected.

Normalizing the database helps with these effects. You don't need to change
column names in your queries, for instance. It means if you have a bad language
value (i.e. no sw(ahili) column), you get no data back instead of a MySQL query
error.

The method you quoted is much clearer - except you really don't need an "id"
column. Rather, the primary key should be "pageName, language".

I don't have any tutorials in mind - but if you do a google search on "database
normalization" you should find several.

--
=============== ===
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
js*******@attgl obal.net
=============== ===