Localization - how do I do it?

[spstieng]

I'm gonna design a webpage in two languages and I'm designing it in an OO fashion.

An example:
I have a object (class) called 'contactform' where I have the fields:
Name
Address
Email
Comment

Now this is in english - but I see no point in coding the same object again to replace the four fields in another language.

One way I guess would be to have variables
$Name
$Address
$Email
$Comment

When loading the form, I just check the language used, and fill in the propper language / text.

My question is, is there an "easy" way of doing this????
I would like to avoid coding an object twice because of localization problems.

[insane]

I've actually used the way with the variables you described. I put them in a separate PHP-file for each language to be included after the language has been determined. I guess there is no simpler way, though I'd like to hear about one 😉

[yahelb]

i think i saw that in php-nuke ...

lets say you have 2 languages english and polish.
for any laguage you'll have file with defines.

define('TXT_NAME', 'Name'); // english file

define('TXT_NAME', '????'); // polish file

and the just include the right file for the language .

hopes this is help.
yahel

[spstieng]

While I was lying in my bed this morning - incredible how your brain works when you just wake up.... 😃 - I think I've come up with a good solution.

I will have a variable $language which is by default set to English or Norwegian (depending where the site is aimed at).
So $language = en (for english).

Now, in the beginning, I will use this for form objects and other objects. When I call for an object, e.g. frmContact, the function will do the follwing:

1. Check the language (by getting the variable from $language)
2. In a separate file, I have a swtich/case or some if statements.
   I was thinking it would work like this:

if ($language == "en")
{
$langName = "Name";
$langAddress = "Address";
}
else if ($language == "no")
{
$langName = "Navn";
$langAddress = "Gate navn";
}

And in my form offcourse I have the variables $langName and $langAddress. The advantages I see using this method are:
- I only have to code one object
- I use "universal" / unique variables so they may be used elsewhere as well
- I only have one page for different languages
- I can very easilly add new languages
- If you have a language option for the user, objects wil be loaded with the selected language.

This has not taken into account written languages as arabic, chinese etc. And I'm not about to install those on my computer either :-) - not unless a customer wants it.

Localization in one thing that many designers do not take into consideration. When designing menues for example, 'about us' may be 8 characters long in english, but in German it could be 20! And if the menu is not wide enough.....
And there are heaps more to take into consideration - but u guys have too google for that ;-)

[barand]

You could use an ini file then adding a new language is just a matter of adding to the that file and using [man]parse_ini_file[/man]

---

[en]
langName=Name
langAddress=Address

[no]
langName=Navn

langAddress=Gate navn

$ini = parse_ini_file('myinifile.ini', true);

$headings = $ini[$country];

Now, if country = 'no',

$headings['langName'] = Navn

hth

[kjelle392]

I have localized a site called www.personprofil.no. I used a MySQL-database with a table for each language, and a class that fetched the right text from a keyword in the code.

The tables are named "text_nor", "text_eng", "text_spa" and so on. In the code I have a session-variable ("lang") that is filled with the choosen language; i.e. "nor" (for norwegian), "eng" for english and "spa" for spanish. In that way, I can have the same sql's in my code:

$sql="SELECT text FROM text_" . $_SESSION['lang'];

Works great 😃