what is the easyiest wat to coding languga supported web sites?

[RFH Reseller: HostCan]

Hello,
I want to design a new web site. I am alwasy designing and finishing X language after that conping to another folder and translate to Y language, but this time I will try to develop as coded language support like HELMs language support. An suggestion or code samples for making it easier? I also very wonder if I can write/change this code sentence by session tags.
if English selected:
<!--#include file="English.asp"-->

if German selected:
<!--#include file="German.asp"-->


...

[Staff: Warren Ashcroft]

The easiest way to do it, is using dictionary files (the new Red Fox sites will use XML dictionaries), then have a common function which does transalation...

EG - For the opening line of a page:

<%=Translate("Welcome to Red Fox Hosting")%>

Then your Translate() function would either return the same text if the session is English, or lookup the translation in a dictionary xml/text.

[RFH Reseller: Sol]

This is a question you really need to take a step back from before asnswering.

How diverse does the translation need to be? ie. Is it a dynamic site and translators will access a back end system to translate content? If so you really need to think about this more carefully. If it is simply a one off and you will be translating the innterface then Include files does seem a viable option, although it would be better to pull in XML files (or other files used as resource files).

[RFH Reseller: nick]

You could always provide a link to the google translation services as google will translate pages between many languages on the fly pretty well. It's nothing compared to manual translation, but it is worth a thought. Here is the Refox home page in Spanish as an example.

[RFH Customer: cswd]

Just watch out - all dynamic language translation causes a performance overhead so if you have a high traffic site, it's better to have two identical pages with static text translated in them and stick them in different directories:

/en/default.asp
/de/default.asp

etc.

Keep your logic and presentation VERY separated when you do that so you don't have to change two loads of logic every time.

My ex company's portal system used a VB app to generate asp pages and upload them (ugly but it worked).

[Staff: Warren Ashcroft]

Helm does its translations with an XML dictionary like I said above, albeit the dictionaries are loaded into memory on application load - still surprisingly fast though

[RFH Reseller: HostCan]

thankx every one for your comments and suggestions much appreciated.


cswd - I've tried this before, but if site content is bigger it wastes too much time to update when needed, this time I'll try to work on XML as Warrens suggestion, however I dont know how to use it I'll ask google of course

Sol - Yeah first it will be dynamic page with asp but I will be translating the interface, may be I can develop more complex in the future... thx.