It does not look bad. I've seen this used many times.
I would however separate the different strings in one file per language. At least, or if the files get large, one file per module per language.
Then your translation class can load and cache the language files (if you don't rely on any other caching system) every time a new language is to be used.
A little example of what i mean
class Translator {
private $lang = array();
private function findString($str,$lang) {
if (array_key_exists($str, $this->lang[$lang])) {
return $this->lang[$lang][$str];
}
return $str;
}
private function splitStrings($str) {
return explode('=',trim($str));
}
public function __($str,$lang) {
if (!array_key_exists($lang, $this->lang)) {
if (file_exists($lang.'.txt')) {
$strings = array_map(array($this,'splitStrings'),file($lang.'.txt'));
foreach ($strings as $k => $v) {
$this->lang[$lang][$v[0]] = $v[1];
}
return $this->findString($str, $lang);
}
else {
return $str;
}
}
else {
return $this->findString($str, $lang);
}
}
}
This will look for .txt files named after the language having entries such as this
Foo=FOO
Bar=BAR
It always falls back to the original string in case it does not find any translation.
It's a very simple example. But there is nothing wrong in my opinion with doing this by yourself if you have no need for a bigger framework.
To use it in a much simpler way you can always do this and create a file called 'EN_Example.txt'
class Example extends Translator {
private $lang = 'EN';
private $package = 'Example';
public function __($str) {
return parent::__($str, $this->lang . '_' . $this->package);
}
}
Sometimes you wish to translate strings that contain variables. One such approach is this which i find simple enough to use from time to time.
// Translate string "Fox=FOX %s %s"
$e = new Example();
// Translated string with substituted arguments
$s = printf($e->__('Fox'),'arg 1','arg 2');
To further integrate variable substitution the printf functionality can be put inside the __() function like this
public function __() {
if (func_num_args() < 1) {
return false;
}
$args = func_get_args();
$str = array_shift($args);
if (count($args)) {
return vsprintf(parent::__($str, $this->lang . '_' . $this->package),$args);
}
else {
return parent::__($str, $this->lang . '_' . $this->package);
}
}