Inspiring

Answered

I18N, L10N, G11N and things related

Forum|Forum|18 years ago
March 29, 2007
5 replies
1227 views

Hi y’all:

I am working on a bilingual project and will soon be getting into the stage where data has to be shown in more than just English. But this may not be so simple, at least for me, since I have never worked with databases in this context.

Imagine a table that lists categories of some kind. I have thought about the following:

1. Have one table of categories for each language - that sounds crazy.

2. Have a different page/template for each language – even crazier!

3. A resource bundle with all the category names in two or more languages; then, in the database, store NOT the category names, but the resource bundle key names and write a CFC, where one of its functions is to retrieve the key name from the database and extracting the key’s value from the appropriate rb.properties (bundle) file.

Of the above, I am inclined to go for #3. But having no experience in this, I would like to hear from someone about how to approach this, as I want to do some good planning before embarking in something that may turn out to be the wrong solution.

Any ideas? Paul Hastings, where are you?.

Regards,

Carlos

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer insuractive

Hey Carlos,
I can see why the example I used was a little confusing. First let me start by trying to clarify what I meant. BTW - the ampersands were just part of the category name, not really anything to do with the table formatting.

The idea I proposed was to have a table with 3 columns:
Category (your category key goes in here)
Language (what language the text is in)
Category_Text (your translated category text)

So instead of needing a new column for each language, you can use 1 field (Language) to ID what language the translated text is in:

Record 1:
Category: Food
Language: English
Category_Text: Food and Meals

Record 2:
Category: Food
Language: Italian
Category_Text: Cibo e Cena

You then can use your SQL statements to pull up the correct Category_Text for a given language.

Unfortunately, the site we currently had running in 3 languages we've now switched back to only being in english (due to a business decision from the higher ups) - the cost of maintaining current professional translations wound up being a little too high for the benefit received.

I think you should definitely check out PaulH's post about rb resources. I had not worked that much with rb's in the past and PaulH defintely has a little more experience in that area.

I

insuractive

Inspiring

Glad I could help.

I

insuractive

Inspiring

Happy to Help, Carlos. Good luck on your project.

C

cheftimoAuthor

Inspiring

Hello, Michael (insuractive), et al:

It looks like I have worked out my language issues with <cfselect>, and your assistance was instrumental in coming up with the solution.

After exploring the thing, I opted for going the database route as you originally suggested, with some modifications. So far, so good; I have tested it several times and it looks like it’s working like a charm. If you have the time to check it out, I would like to know what you think – and that goes for anyone else interested in this subject.

I have posted the explanation of what I did on my blog, under the title “I18N/G11N/L10N with CFSELECT”. Again, thank you very much for invaluable help.

Best regards,

Carlos

S

See4th

Known Participant

cheftimo,

Nice work on the columbia site. I need some clarification though.

Did you end up using resource bundles?
Is the translated text stored in the db or in a resource bundle?
How did you break out each page's translation- a db value pointing to the appropriate RB?

Thanks for your help,

Jeff

I

insuractiveCorrect answer

Inspiring

Hey Carlos,
I can see why the example I used was a little confusing. First let me start by trying to clarify what I meant. BTW - the ampersands were just part of the category name, not really anything to do with the table formatting.

The idea I proposed was to have a table with 3 columns:
Category (your category key goes in here)
Language (what language the text is in)
Category_Text (your translated category text)

So instead of needing a new column for each language, you can use 1 field (Language) to ID what language the translated text is in:

Record 1:
Category: Food
Language: English
Category_Text: Food and Meals

Record 2:
Category: Food
Language: Italian
Category_Text: Cibo e Cena

You then can use your SQL statements to pull up the correct Category_Text for a given language.

Unfortunately, the site we currently had running in 3 languages we've now switched back to only being in english (due to a business decision from the higher ups) - the cost of maintaining current professional translations wound up being a little too high for the benefit received.

I think you should definitely check out PaulH's post about rb resources. I had not worked that much with rb's in the past and PaulH defintely has a little more experience in that area.

C

cheftimoAuthor

Inspiring

Hi Michael:

Got it! Now your table structure is clear to me.

But I am inclined to keep the key values in the RB, where they would reside with the rest of the resource keys for the whole site; that seems more modular, easier to move around and share.

In the case of my Categories table (which is now in Spanish), I wouldn’t have to do anything to the database, as the names now in there could become the key names (and Spanish labels in the RB). And in looking, I realized that the CFC methods I already have, will work for what I need.

I am still hoping paulH will respond, as there may be things I haven’t contemplated. He rules on this subject.

Too bad your site has reverted to just one language. I don’t know what your product or who the audience is, and I don’t know about the French/Italian numbers, but it seems to me the Spanish and Japanese markets should not be ignored by anyone in the USA selling on the www.

Any way, thank you very much for your help, it gave me an alternative I hadn’t thought about for future jobs.

Have fun.

Carlos

N

Newsgroup_User

Inspiring

insuractive wrote:
> Why not put all category names for each language all in 1 table? Something
> like this:
>
> Category: Language: Text
> Food EN Food & Meals
> Food IT Cibo & Cena
>
> We've built out one of our major sites in english, spanish and french using
> the above method. The resource bundle seems like a good idea especially if you
> are going to be sharing those resources with a non-CF application, but it seems
> like a database solution might give you more maintainability.

on the contrary there's a whole ecosystem that's built up around rb. most
professional translations services will either supply an rb or something that
can easily be imported to an rb (very often XLIFF). there's several very good
tools that can manage rb, from IBM's icu4j rbManager to jason sheedy's cf based
rb manager--for complex projects, a good rb management tool is a *must*. if you
skimp on professional translations services (which is not often a good idea), a
good rb management tool will really help in managing in-house translations,
what's been translated for what locales/languages, etc.

C

cheftimoAuthor

Inspiring

Hello, Michael

Thank you very much for replying; due to connection problems, I had not been able to look at the forums since I posted two days ago.

I use RbManager, and with all its bugs and quirks, it’s one of my favorite applications to work with. I agree about the translations thing, I have not yet ever seen a decent machine translation.

I do want to look into your database suggestion (and when I said separate ‘tables’ in my previous post, I meant ‘columns’). But I don’t quite understand how it works – I was thinking a column for each language, but it looks to me like you have all languages in one column; and how does the ampersand come into the picture?

If you have the time, I would really appreciate a little more explanation about this – I am by no means an expert: most of what I know about this subject is from Paul Hasting’s chapter in Ben Forta’s advanced CF book.

I would be curious to look at your trilingual site; if that’s OK, would you post the URL?. Here is the little site I made using RbManager and CF: http://www.dircolombia.com/.

If you wish, you are welcome to contact me directly. Hope to hear something.

Best regards,

Carlos – carlos@timos.com

I

insuractive

Inspiring

Why not put all category names for each language all in 1 table? Something like this:

Category, Language,Text
Food, EN, Food & Meals
Food, IT, Cibo & Cena

We've built out one of our major sites in english, spanish and french using the above method. The resource bundle seems like a good idea especially if you are going to be sharing those resources with a non-CF application, but it seems like a database solution might give you more maintainability.

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