Languages

21 posts by 8 authors in: Forums > CMS Builder
Last Post: September 7, 2011   (RSS)

By jimbly2 - September 9, 2008

Hello,

in your experience, what is the best way to approach the multi language issue? I am shortly going to be re-developing a site that I built with CMS Builder, that will now have localised versions in Russian and Chinese - is it best to store these as seperate elements - or can this be translated on the fly?

Thanks for any / all advice! [:)]

Jim

Re: [jimbly2] Languages

By Dave - September 9, 2008

There's some sites that can do translating on the fly (such as google translate) so you could look into that but I'm not sure about the quality.

To do it in CMS Builder there's two main methods:

1) You can create a duplicate of each field for the different language (Title (en), Title (ru), etc) and then have a different viewer for each page that only shows the fields for that language.

This works well if you can count on everything being translated.

2) You can have a dropdown field for "language" and then separate records for the different languages. Then multiple viewers on the website that filter the results to only show english records for the english section, etc.

Hope that helps!
Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com

Re: [jimbly2] Languages

By Dave - September 9, 2008

Both involve just one section or table.

With method 1 your edit page might look like this:

Title (en) [______________________________]
Title (ru) [______________________________]

Content (en) [______________________________]
Content (ru) [______________________________]

And with method 2 your edit page might look like this:

Language [English, Russian | V ]
Title [______________________________]
Content [______________________________]

So that way you have all the content in the database. You'd have to create a second set of all your viewer pages for each language though, or have some other means of determining which fields or records to show.

So there's actually two issues, the first is how you store it all in the database, and the second is how you setup your website to show the right language.

Hope that helps!
Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com

Re: [Dave] Languages

By jimbly2 - September 10, 2008

Hi Dave,

ok - I think I understand! But I don't really see how you would ony need one section for two languages? [unsure]

thanks

Jim

Re: [jimbly2] Languages

By Dave - September 10, 2008

Hi Jim,

I guess a 3rd way would be to do it with multiple sections. It really depends on what makes the most sense for the site and the translators.

Probably the best way would be to experiment with a small part of the site setting it up a few different ways and see what made the most sense.
Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com

Re: [Dave] Languages

By simonwh - October 19, 2008

Hello Dave, I too have a need to offer multiple languages for content. Your suggestions above are helpful - in that I can see that it should be possible - but you don't explain how to actually implement it?

I have just built a site with CMSB and the client now wants to offer the content in 5 languages. So how do I go about implementing option 2 as detailed above?

Re: [simonwh] Languages

By Dave - October 20, 2008

Hi Simonwh,

Start by adding a pulldown field called "Language" with the names of all your language.

Then add a few test records for each language (the content doesn't matter).

The on your viewer list page add something like this to only list records of a certain language:
'where' => " language = 'spanish' ",

Hope that helps!
Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com

Re: [Dave] Languages

By simonwh - October 20, 2008

Thanks, I think I get what you mean, I'll give it a go

Re: [Dave] Languages

By Maurice - December 30, 2010

Hi Dave,

these tips are verry helpful thnx

Do you have a idea how to handle multi language voor SEO.

is better to use the multiple field option or to make mutliple sections?

Greetz Maurice
-------------------------------------------

Dropmonkey.nl