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Posted by Ikke on 04/12/07 22:44
"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi> wrote in
news:BU%Sh.34284$h92.21101@reader1.news.saunalahti.fi:
> Scripsit Ikke:
>
>> I'd like to set up a new site, which has to be multilingual (english,
>> and my native language).
>
> That's bilingual rather than multilingual.
Yes and no. Yes, the site is bilingual as I defined it. No, because the
site can grow and could become multilingual.
In other words, any solution limited to bilingual sites would be
considered invalid.
Anyway, it's a nitpick :)
>> Now I'd like to ask whether or not this is possible - I know it's
>> possible to translate all the pages and use index-en.html and
>> index-nl.html etc, or even use subdirectories, but I'm still faced
>> with some problems.
>
> It's probably best to use subdirectories, for easier management.
I've had a look around on the net, and it seems that the easiest and best
solution would indeed be subdirectories. This would also keep structure
and updates simpler in the long run I guess...
>> First, there is only one index.html - which language should I use
>> here?
>
> In theory, you could make it appear in the language of the user's
> choice. See
> http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/multi/
> But I don't really believe much in "language negotiation" any more.
> It's too probable that many of your Dutch-speaking visitors are using
> an English version of a browser, probably left at the factory defaults
> for language preferences, and this typically means that English (or,
> worse still, specifically US English) is declared (by the browser in
> HTTP headers) as the only language that the user understands at all.
Thanks for pointing this out - however, it was not my intention to let
the browser decide the language.
The reason I spoke of cookies, was sites like eBay and such. At first,
they present you a page to let you choose a language. Later on, this page
is bypassed and you are redirected to the language of your choice.
For user who log on, this is easily accomplished by checking their
settings. Public users are a different case, therefor I thought of
cookies.
But never mind all that, read on please...
>> Logic dictates that english is more popular than dutch, yet
>> most of my visitors will be dutch.
>
> You could make it Dutch, with a prominent link like
> <div lang="en">This site in English: <a
> href="index-en.html">...</a></div> (where "..." is the name of the
> site in English) near the start of the document. Naturally you would
> have a similar reciprocal link in the Dutch version.
And here we have the winner - after reading all the replies, I think that
this might indeed be the best solution. Let the users know there are
different versions of the site, and give them an easy way to read the
site in their native/favourite language.
> Moreover, put similar links to the other language version on every
> page. The reason is that when someone stumbles across a subpage of
> yours, via Google or via a link, the availability of the page in
> another language might be crucial information.
I hadden't thought of this in terms of Google. As a matter of fact, I
remember a project a few years ago where they had trouble convincing
Google there were several languages, because the language was passed as a
parameter to the pages. Google tends to skip these from time to time, and
so Google only saw the English version of their website.
>> Second, is there a way to remember the language a user selected? I'm
>> thinking cookies here - is it possible to use cookies without using
>> JavaScript? And reading them? If I'm using JavaScript, I'll be
>> limiting my audience a little, I'm afraid...
>
> Cookie settings don't require JavaScript, but why would you use
> cookies?
At first I thought it would be the best way to remember the settings for
a public user, but...
> You would simply have each page link to other pages in the same
> language (except for the link to the version of the page itself in the
> other language), so users will automatically stay within one language
> version, unless they decide to move to the other.
....this is probably way better.
> P.S. Please don't do as I've done - a bilingual _page_ is generally
> not a good idea, even if a bilingual _site_ might be. I'm just too
> lazy to change things now.
I don't know why a bilingual site would be a bad idea - for a lot of
sites in my country, it is not even and option NOT to be bilingual (since
our country is basically bilingual).
Thanks,
Ikke
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