One of our sites, http://www.sponsorclick.com is translated into 5 languages so far
(more coming).
A quick synopsis of our method:
We had to translate three things: text in the pages, values from the database, and
images in the pages (some images have words in them).
1) Text:
In Application.cfm we load a large structure into an Application variable (only has to
load into memory ONCE) with all of the different text messages in each language we
support. Each piece of text (we call a 'label') has a name and a value for each
language. One example would be:
Application.labels['en']['geninfo'] = "General Information"
Application.labels['fr']['geninfo'] = "Informations g�n�rales"
Application.labels['de']['geninfo'] = "Allgemeine Informationen"
This structure is loaded from the database only once when the server starts up.
(Of course we have admin pages to edit these values, and a facility to import Excel
spreadsheets for bulk updates)
We currently have over 16,000 values in this table in the database.
Each time Application.cfm is run, we check the user's current language and assign a
structure to the appropriate language set:
variables.label = Application.labels[#language#]
*note: this is making a POINTER to Application scope data in a local variable. Making
a pointer is VERY fast. Copying the values would be much slower. This local variable,
label, has to be locked as if it was an Application variable (because it really is).
The only reason we didnt use Application.label is to save typing later on.
We use automatic read locking on the Application scope to do this for all accesses to
Application data.
Now each instance on the page that needs to display text uses the variable:
< td>< b>#label.geninfo#< /b>< /td>
2) Database values:
All database values (mostly choices for select lists) come from a table that is
generic enough to be used for all multilingual data:
Table multilingual:
list varchar(40)
name varchar(40)
order int
value text <= This is a LARGE TEXT field that can hold more than 256 characters,
although most values are < 100 characters
3) Images:
All URLs on the site have the current language prepended to them, eg: /en/index.cfm,
/fr/index.cfm, /de/index.cfm, etc.
The Apache web server has mappings set up to remove the language for cfm and htm files
so that /en/index.cfm is actually the file /index.cfm.
Image URLs are simple relative URLs such as: 'IMG SRC=images/file.jgp'. The full URL
would resolve to /en/images/file.jpg or /fr/images/file.jpg for example.
The Apache web server also has mappings for /en/images => /languages/images/en/ and
/fr/images => /languages/images/fr/ and so forth so the images will actually come from
a language specific image directory
At 02:10 PM 1/16/01 +0100, Javalenzuela wrote:
>Hi guys,
>
>I work in a Internet company (startup?) and we have +-600 CFM files (some
>with fusebox).
>Now, we are thinking to switch the website in 2+ languages (we are in
>Europe) but we don't know what is the best
>way to do this. I mean, something with few performance penalties and
>flexible enough to have several languages later (at beggining we only want
>2 languages)
>
>some questions:
>- May I use BD to choose and retrieve all the text messages ?
>- May I enhance the pages with more intelligente in order to they can
>translate in each web request ?
>- what about to copy and translate each page in a off-line mode ?
>
>Anyone has some experience in this matter?
>Do you know links or URL about ?
>
>Any help is useful... (i want to make the rigth decision)
>
>thanks in advance,
>
>~Juandres
>
>
>
>
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