I have a website that iam working for atm, at first it was only in english, but now the client said he wants to add a few more languages, french, italian and spanish, he send me this website as reference http://www.travideos.com/, notice how if you change the language it adds it to the url, example: http://fr.travideos.com/, i have no idea how to do that, but of course i cant say that to the client, jeje, can someone here help me with this.

which is your problem.

1. creating a sub domain i.e. fr.yourdomain.com

2. having your site in other languages.

These are two different problems

Oh dude, you're just fcked

You have 2 choices
1. Use the easy method, google translate

2. The "you're fcked method", build an internal translation function from scratch and run ALL your application ouput strings through it. Therefore you'll have to do a thorough manual search and replace

When you chose your method, tell me, i'll gladly help

spikes C: Oh dude, you're just fcked

You have 2 choices
1. Use the easy method, google translate

2. The "you're fcked method", build an internal translation function from scratch and run ALL your application ouput strings through it. Therefore you'll have to do a thorough manual search and replace

When you chose your method, tell me, i'll gladly help

Google translate is not free so it could cause friction with your client because they charge according to use.

Manually translating your site then copy pasting into your html is just not right. Apart from the sheer work involved, anytime there is even just the tiniest change, you would have to do the whole process all over again leaving open doors for bugs.

Dude, the best option is to find a decent framework in your favorite programming language that has built in support for internalization and use it to rebuild your site.

tundebabzy:

Google translate is not free so it could cause friction with your client because they charge according to use.

Manually translating your site then copy pasting into your html is just not right. Apart from the sheer work involved, anytime there is even just the tiniest change, you would have to do the whole process all over again leaving open doors for bugs.

Dude, the best option is to find a decent framework in your favorite programming language that has built in support for internalization and use it to rebuild your site.

I didn't mean html, i meant text strings. Even the frameworks use it, you still have to pass in the text strings into the function and write your own language files. No one can ever do that for you

spikes C: Oh dude, you're just fcked

You have 2 choices
1. Use the easy method, google translate

2. The "you're fcked method", build an internal translation function from scratch and run ALL your application ouput strings through it. Therefore you'll have to do a thorough manual search and replace

When you chose your method, tell me, i'll gladly help

No 2 is the way to go. and dont worry u are not bleeped . You still employ the same template as with ur current site. All u need do is have files that maps words to thier corresponding translations in diff languages. This can be done with xml, json or YAML. eg for french you have translations.fr, for italian you have translations.it etc

Then in ur template, u have string placeholders that loads this translations when the script encouters them. U will want to load all the data in an associated array(PHP), turples(python) or my personal favorite Maps(java) at runtime so that u dont open a file every time you need to subtitute a placeholder.

Your program will have to determine the location of the visitor through IP address and redirect accordingly. There are many projects that can help you with geolocation. In this regard, u also have 2 options as pointed out by javanian, u could create subdomains for each country eg fr.[youtsitedomain].com and have your script do the redirect based on ip address. or you could create a URL parameter like www.[youtsitedomain].com?lang=fr. the subdomain is cleaner though, but it is more work.

Most web frameworks come with this so just go for one of them.


@Spikes C
"Therefore you'll have to do a thorough manual search and replace" - manual search and replace mite be slow sir. Instead, each word should be represented by a hash key in a collection like a hashmap for fast lookup which then points to that word's tranlations. This way, words like ("is", "they", "we" that are common will only be replaced once cos all of them will produce the same hash value. manual search and replace will replace each time it sees a word, even if that word oocurs millions of times.

What you fail to understand is that string of words do not make meaning when translated, that is why google translate still have errors.

Do not use hash for the keys because you need a fail safe method, if a hash does not exist in a language file, what happens. To explain more, i'll post the method i use when i get to my pc.

Secondly, i think you misunderstood me, i didn't say he should do a search and replace and have multiple files, i meant he should do a search and replace on the template and run the strings through the function.

E.g replace 'home' with lang('home')


Give me a few hours, let me get to my pc

This is the language file for english. named en.php
Read the comments to understand the benefits of each part

<?php
function lang($phrase){

//static : so that the variable is not declared on every function run
//I use pure arrays so there's no need for preprocessing like sarutobi suggested
	static $strings = array(

//the keys are all small letters not capitals, very very important
	'home' => 'Home',
	'account' => 'Account',
	'join' => 'Join',
	'login' => 'Login',
	'proceed' => 'Proceed',
	'verify' => 'Verify',
	'post' => 'Post',
	'ad blocks' => 'Ad Blocks',
	'footer left' => 'Footer left',
	'footer right' => 'Footer right',
	'footer bottom left' => 'Footer bottom left',
	'footer bottom right' => 'Footer bottom right',
	'your e-currency account number' => 'Your e-currency account number',
	'your e-currency account name' => 'Your e-currency account name',
	);

//convert the phrase to small letters so as to match with the keys
	$phrase = strtolower(trim($phrase));

//if the phrase exists, display the translation, else display the phrase itself
//This is the fail safe part, if the phrase translation does not exist, the phrase itself should be displayed.
//If you use hash keys, the hash would be displayed 

	if(array_key_exists($phrase,$strings)){
		return $strings[$phrase];
		}else{
			return $phrase;
			}
}

This is my config file, it gets included on every page
ROOT is a constant i declared myself. I always have problem with include files

//set and import language files with its function
if(!isset($_SESSION['LANG'])){$_SESSION['LANG'] = 'en';}

require_once ROOT . "language/$_SESSION[LANG].php";

spikes C: This is the language file for english. named en.php
Read the comments to understand the benefits of each part

<?php
function lang($phrase){

//static : so that the variable is not declared on every function run
//I use pure arrays so there's no need for preprocessing like sarutobi suggested
	static $strings = array(

//the keys are all small letters not capitals, very very important
	'home' => 'Home',
	'account' => 'Account',
	'join' => 'Join',
	'login' => 'Login',
	'proceed' => 'Proceed',
	'verify' => 'Verify',
	'post' => 'Post',
	'ad blocks' => 'Ad Blocks',
	'footer left' => 'Footer left',
	'footer right' => 'Footer right',
	'footer bottom left' => 'Footer bottom left',
	'footer bottom right' => 'Footer bottom right',
	'your e-currency account number' => 'Your e-currency account number',
	'your e-currency account name' => 'Your e-currency account name',
	);

//convert the phrase to small letters so as to match with the keys
	$phrase = strtolower(trim($phrase));

//if the phrase exists, display the translation, else display the phrase itself
//This is the fail safe part, if the phrase translation does not exist, the phrase itself should be displayed.
//If you use hash keys, the hash would be displayed 

	if(array_key_exists($phrase,$strings)){
		return $strings[$phrase];
		}else{
			return $phrase;
			}
}

This is the fail safe part, if the phrase translation does not exist, the phrase itself should be displayed.
//If you use hash keys, the hash would be displayed - it won't, it won't, it won't but i dont want to argue
@OP: there is ur solution
@spike c: good one.

sarutobi:

This is the fail safe part, if the phrase translation does not exist, the phrase itself should be displayed.
//If you use hash keys, the hash would be displayed - it won't, it won't, it won't but i dont want to argue
@OP: there is ur solution
@spike c: good one.

It depends on your algorithm, pls tell us
No argument but debate, we gotta learn new things everyday na