We've got a major project on the horizon that will require the site to be presented in a number of different languages, including Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and a bunch of European languages. The textural content of the site isn't that much - it's mostly field labels and headings, buttons, etc. rather than long blocks of text. I've seen two different approaches to handling multi-language sites: I've seen (and used) a variable include where each text element is defined as a static variable (in PHP in my case) and those variables defined on page load according to the language. This has the advantage of having only one 'site' and having all the text in one place which makes getting and inputting translations easier. However, a lot of major sites seem to use subdirectories holding entire copies of the site in the chosen language. This seems like unnecessary duplication to me but there might be a good reason - possibly related to character encoding or where larger blocks of text are used. Does anyone have any pearls of wisdom to share on the subject of multi-language sites? I'm open to any and all recommendations or comments. Jon
Hi Leo, Search engine visibility is unlikely to be a factor in this case - the site isn't 'public' as such and doesn't require any search engine indexing. Jon