One site, multiple languages

Freeway
1

Hi all.

I have a client who would eventually like their site to be presented in English, German, French and Dutch.

Now, the simplest way would be to have four parallel sites, one for each language, but there are headaches down the road with that method.

So, are there any truly idiot-proof ways to do one site, one set of images and pages, but with different languages when a visitor clicks a button or something, in an elegant way?

Remember I am a codeaphobic, so anything outwith Freeway will need to be explained in very simple terms!

Cheers

Heather

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

2

Sometime around 7/5/08 (at 05:19 -0400) Heather Kavanagh said:

Remember I am a codeaphobic, so anything outwith Freeway will need
to be explained in very simple terms!

Interesting. Heather, do you have Scottish roots? The word “outwith”
is peculiarly Scottish in origin and usage. Although it isn’t hard to
figure out, it isn’t used by people from anywhere else in the world!

As far as your actual question goes (don’t you just hate it when
someone ignores what you say ang fixes on how you say it?), take a
good close look at Max’s WebYep actions. You probably need to store
the content externally and have the right stuff pulled into the
design on the fly, when pages are served.

k

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

3

If you want machine translation, then you can use the free Google
Translation service for that. The quality of the translation can be
quite variable, naturally, since it’s simple algorithmic replacement,
not the work of a native speaker.

If you want to maintain multiple copies of the text yourself, then
you could make a simple replacement system using a lookup table –
essentially a large text file with all of the text from your site in
it. To make a new version of the site, you would translate this text
into a new language, and rename the file. Then on the server, you
could use some Clever Scripting™ to intercept all page requests,
slurp the requested page layout into a variable, and then interpret
the url to determine which version of the text to use as a substitute.

So you would point visitors to

http://example.com/es/index.html

or

http://example.com/fr/index.html

And the server would work out to use the es.php translation table or
the fr.php translation table.

I did some work on an Action to make this easier quite some time ago.
I’ll see if I can find it.

Walter

On May 7, 2008, at 10:34 AM, Keith Martin wrote:

Sometime around 7/5/08 (at 05:19 -0400) Heather Kavanagh said:

Remember I am a codeaphobic, so anything outwith Freeway will need
to be explained in very simple terms!

Interesting. Heather, do you have Scottish roots? The word “outwith”
is peculiarly Scottish in origin and usage. Although it isn’t hard to
figure out, it isn’t used by people from anywhere else in the world!

As far as your actual question goes (don’t you just hate it when
someone ignores what you say ang fixes on how you say it?), take a
good close look at Max’s WebYep actions. You probably need to store
the content externally and have the right stuff pulled into the
design on the fly, when pages are served.

k

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

4

On 7 May 2008, at 15:34, Keith Martin wrote:

take a
good close look at Max’s WebYep actions. You probably need to store
the content externally and have the right stuff pulled into the
design on the fly, when pages are served.

That sounds favourite. Thanks, Keith.

My next question will be: is this something that can be bolted on at
a later stage? I’m just designing the English site at the moment, but
I was asked to consider the other languages for a future date.

Walter, I think the text will be supplied as translated. I don’t
think I’d trust a machine not to drop a clanger =o)

As for Scottish heritage, well, not that I know of. There’s Irish in
there somewhere (from Co Clare), and other roots stem from Surrey and
Sussex as far as we can gather from family researches. I think I just
like playing with the language.

Heather

“Freeway - Web Design for All”

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

5

Hi heather this is a tricky one… :o)

WebYeb can be bolted on afterwards… infact when I start to styling things with some sort of degree of subtlety then I tend to create the page the way I want it and, when its all looking hunky dory I swop out the static text and images for webyep items. At least that way it will end up the way I want it.

Images, menus and text can all be set to global so for example if an image “pic1” is used on 20 pages then if you set the webyep image to be a global picture within the action palette drop down and then if the client changed it on one page, all the instances of that image would be updated at the time. The same goes with text and menus they too can be unique or set to global

speak soon max

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options