How Are You Accomplishing Your i18n?

cobrabyte asks: "My team has recently been given the task of implementing internationalization (i18n) in our MySQL databases (PHP-interfaced). Essentially, for every article X, we need it presented in any number of languages (once translated). As we were working on gathering the necessary procedures, we were very surprised to find that there's not much organized information regarding i18n using MySQL and PHP. Is the topic of i18n too new to garner any usable info?"

Surpise!

[fm6]

...we were very surprised to find that there's not much organized information...

You shouldn't be. Internationalization (I'm a good typist, so I can dispense with that mysterious "18") only applies to human-readable stuff. In other words, documentation. (Yes, captions on forms are documentation too!) Is there anything software people are less motivated to deal with than documentation?

One more thing

[JavaRob]

Forgot to mention... remember you are always balancing ease of development and ease of maintenance.

Something that helps one does NOT always help the other -- for example, building the site in English, then making complete copies and translating all text into other languages is easy to develop, but quickly becomes a nightmare in maintenance... the customer wants a minor change and you have to update 10 files.

Just walk through quick scenarios for each option: I would do X to create and integrate this page, and I would have to do Y to update its layout or text later. If they add in a few new fields, I'd do Z... you get the idea. If there are dozens of steps, and you'll be laughing cynically at the suggestion of bringing a new developer onto the team... you're probably doing something wrong.

Re:It is just you

[pla]

Of course English is the dominate second language in the world.

In IT, English holds the majority by far. And Spanish doesn't even come in second - You have Japanese and German as distant seconds, with Hebrew and French as dark-horse thirds.

Attempts at internationalization simply hinder the adoption of English as the next ubiquitous academic language. Much like Greek and Latin during the Roman empire - The rabble may all speak Spanish, but those who want to appear educated speak English. Of course, Latin later went on to hold the same place, so perhaps some day Spanish will function as the language of the academic elite.

Personally, I don't have great hope of us not blowing up the planet before then. So I code with English as my target language. Speak it, or don't use my programs, doesn't much matter to me


Many of those who care about i18n do not speak English at all!

I don't think that needs an exclamation mark - It doesn't come as a particular surprise to anyone. If you speak English, you don't have the least interest in "internationalization", which basically means "Make it accessible to people who don't speak English".


And I don't write this as a xenophobic rant... I regularly use programs written by Japanese coders, and a few in German. And do I sit around complaining about how those coders, who already have given me something I find useful, should do extra work unrelated to the purpose of the program to make those programs more friendly to me? No. I recognized my inability to read the menus and such as a shortcoming in myself, and made the effort to learn enough Japanese and German (albeit very little) to navigate those programs.

Or to put that another way - If Bill Gates only spoke Italian, a LOT more people would have learned at least a basic proficiency in it by now.

Re:It is just you

[thesixthreplicant]

live in belgium and you'll know how to make multi-language sites. jesus, the number of times we have demos of CMS systems and the first question i ask is 'how do you implement a multilanguage site?' and they always say 'it'll be in the next edition'. funnily enough they're quite happy to have the admin module in multiply languages but actually having the *site* use multiple languages is always a big no-no.

ciao