RESTful API: How to handle translated textfields in representations?

Question

I am designing a RESTful API for a booking application. There are accommodations that you can request a list or the details. As the application targets a multi-language audience, the descriptions are (sometimes) available in different languages.

Now I'm not sure how to handle these translations in the representation of an accommodation. Without the multiple languages I would make "description" a field or the accommodation object, quite simple.

Any idea how to solve this elegantly?

My current idea: Add a list of descriptions with text<->culture pairs instead of the description field and an additional subressource /descriptions to the accommodation for the creating (POST), updating (PUT) and deleting (DELETE) of new translations.

Answer 1

For retrieving the representations in the appropriate language you simply set the Accept-Language HTTP header.

Request:

GET /Hotel/345
Accept-Language: fr

Response:

<Hotel>
  <Description xml:lang='fr'>Ce edifice est magnifique</Description>
</Hotel>

For doing the updates you could just include multiple description elements, assuming you are using xml as your media type format.

Request:

PUT /Hotel/345

<Hotel>
  <Description xml:lang='en'>This building is magnificent</Description>
  <Description xml:lang='fr'>Ce edifice est magnifique</Description>
</Hotel>