What Should I Know and Consider To Create Multi Language Web Site

Question

I'm Creating a Multi Language website with at least 5 language, what should I consider

Answer 1

Please see: Best Practices for Developing World-Ready Applications

Walkthrough: Using Resources for Localization with ASP.NET

Answer 2

When I developed bi-directional web applications, I found the following practices helped too much:

To make your page as easy to globalize as possible, follow these best practices:

❑ Avoid using absolute positioning and sizes for controls.

❑ Use the entire width and height of forms.

❑ Size elements relative to the overall size of the form.

❑ Use a separate table cell for each control.

❑ Avoid enabling the NoWrap property in tables.

❑ Avoid specifying the Align property in tables.

source: MCTS Self-Paced Training kit: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Web-based client development.

• As a general tip, I found using tables instead of just DIVs is very helopful.

Answer 3

On a technical front not a lot, you can use a framework like Zend or Kohana or Rails etc. which usually have the ability to replace the content with tags and then fill the tag with the language of choice at run time. The different languages reside in appropriately named directories and can be triggered by the browser language tag or another mechanism. If you ate not using a framework with this facility then study one to se how it is done.

After that and in no particular order.

• Why multilingual? you really need a compelling reason to do it as the workload you are taking on is large and complex and onerous. I know all the reasons about how and why people like sites in their native language but for a multi lingual site's investment in money you need to be making a proper return on the investment and not just doing it for the sake of it.
• Localising, L10N or internationalisation i18n, is not just about language. It is about about cultural differences. Anglo Saxons like cool restrained san-serif type sites. Latin and Latin American cultures like more vibrant colours and cursive type faces. And so on. So you need to have a mechanism that will change the css for each language as well (well to be truly efective you do)
• Who is doing the translation? Remember it is an idiomatic translation you need, Google Translate API will not cut it and you need a native speaker to translate from and to the target. So for example if you are using FIGS (French Italian etc) from an English original. YOu need a translator for English to French, English to German, English to Italian, and English to Spanish (see the costs mounting?). A good bureau will provide all this for you and manage the process though.
• Proof reading. Can you speak 5 languages well enough to check that above work is correct?
• Maintenance. Again assuming English is the base language and there is a new page or a page rewrite or even a typo you need to go through the above process and update the site so you need a good workflow and process control system to ensure that the changes and updates work effectively. The ongoing maintenance can be crippling in time and cost, work it out before you start.
• Beware of advice form people who localise programmes/applications It is not remotely the same thing.
• Many solutions actually use separate web sites for each localisation rather than the all in one approach. This can be counterintuitive when we want to put it all into one "technical" package. However you can by separating the sites easily cope with different styles, and character sets and ltr text etc. You can stagger updates and manage the workflow more effectively, adding new site is far far simpler and it allow you to use the different URL's tha may be required and allows you to optimise each site for SEO.