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Multi-Language Applications

Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 3:37 pm
by VirtuosiMedia
Are there best practices for creating a multiple language application? Specifically, I'd like to know about how the languages are organized and how they are included into the application.

The only way I've seen it is an application had variables for every phrase that was used in the application. All the variables were included in a single file and that file was included in every single place text was displayed. Translations were produced by creating a copy of that file and changing the values to the variables. Each language was placed in its own folder.

While that method worked, it kind of makes me cringe. I could improve on it by splitting the files up so that you only load what you need, but it still doesn't seem very elegant. Storing everything in a database is another option, but I like that even less.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Resources?

Re: Multi-Language Applications

Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 5:11 pm
by Eran
You should have a look at Zend_Translate - http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.translate.html. It's a component for organizing translations and supports multiple file formats which are standard for this need.