How to develop multilingual website?

[PHPycho]

Hello forums!!

I would like to have the experts to share about developing multilingual websites.

AFAIK, Multilingual Websites generally consists of two parts:
1> Static (Form labels, Header titles, Messages etc., Generally file based)
2> Dynamic (Db Contents like Categories, news posts etc, Obviously db based)

Managing Static contents is easy which can be easily done as:

en
- form_label.php
- messages.php
:
etc
nl
- form_lable.php
- messages.php
:
:

language files generally consists of associative arrays or defined as constants for the static content translation.

But the complexity part comes with the Dynamic contents translation.
I would like to know how you develop the multilingual website (esp for dynamic contents).

Thanks for the ideas/suggestions in advance.

[johanafm]

PHPycho;10928440 wrote:

2> Dynamic (Db Contents like Categories, news posts etc, Obviously db based)

Not nececssarily db based, although it most certainly is an option. However, you will end up with an additional table to join in for each of the other tables you use.

Another option is to use a template engine that handles multiple languages, such as [url=http://www.smarty.net[/url]smarty. While it's obviously possible to set up the same language handling yourself, smarty has the upside of being able precompile its template and optionally cache the html results as well.

all you need if one or more conf files containing your languages

[en_US]
colour = color
lots_of_text = """
This is a very
long text
"""

[en_UK]
colour = colour
lots_of_text = """
This is a very
long text
"""

When you load the conf file, you specify what section you want.

In my opinion this is simpler to implement than the DB approach.

[PHPycho]

For db design for multilingual website, i have come up with following solutions
and don't know which one is perfect also want to know if there is any other good options

Obviously firstly we need language table as:

----------------

|languages

|id
|code
|flag
|is_active
----------------

Possible solutions
1> using one table(suppose we have 'news' table for example)

------------

|news

|id
|language_id
|title
|body
|created_by
|created_date
|is_active
:
:

2> Using two tables

------------

|news

|id
|created_by
|created_date
|is_active
:
:

---------------

|news_contents

|id
|news_id
|language_id
|title
|body
----------------

3> Using one master table for all tables which needs translation

--------------

|news

|id
|title
|body
|created_by
|created_date

|is_active

---

|categories

|id
|title
|description
|is_active
--------------

master table:

---------------

|translation

|id
|language_id
|table_name
|table_field
|translated_value
----------------

I have found all these structure so far, dont know which one is better as i havent used such in my multilingual website.
I would like to know the pros n cons for these structures, best db structure.

Note: Any no of languages can be added ranging from 1 -> N

Thanks for the help again in advance.

[johanafm]

I still recommend going for a non-db solution. But if you do, don't use #1. It's not normalized.

#2 means more tables, but you won't reduce joins by going with #3. #2 also lets you use foreign key constraints.