Multiple Languages - Incomplete Content - how to design

multiple language web

[Tracy]

I'm working on a web site which will have some pages, but not all, translated into German, French, Italian, and Spanish. We have so many English catalogs, that it would be too expensive to translate everything into all these languages, all at once. My problem is how do I blend English and another language together without it seeming awkard? For example, I can have a German product page, but the catalog may only be available in English. Anyone have any experience with this or have seen any web sites that handle this?

Thanks.

[oilman]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld Tracey.

Would it work to maybe add a language selector to the products or catalogues that are available in multiple languages? I could just be an extra field for the product that indicates other languages. If a user comes across the page they may not be able to read it but the will see that there are other versions available. This way as you can just add it as you go.

[contracosta]

I am facing the same issue with a site where the site is in English and about 1% of it (scattered around) also in Spanish. This is a very challenging UI issue and I think since the reality is inelegant the solution must also be a little awkward.

One thing I would like to suggest avoiding, which some people will try to pressure you into: flags as icons for language. Flags means nations, not languages. I have worked on several sites where there was pressure to use little flags and I think that that is murky.

[Tracy]

These were great ideas. I did't even think of using a selector on the catalog page itself.

[pageoneresults]

If you are going to be adding content that is specific to a particular language, I might suggest planning your directory structure to accommodate the growth. For example...

www.domain.com/en/
www.domain.com/fr/
www.domain.com/es/

I have a similar situation where I've got some pages that are translated into other languages. We've given those pages their own sub-directories so they can be easily managed. I've also included the Language META Tag to assist indexers in letting them know that the content is in a specific language, like this...

<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="es">

ISO 639 2 Letter Language Codes [w3.org] (Scroll down for the 2 letter codes.)

[gettoefl]

If you are using an apache server, consider using language negotiation.

Example:

create three files

file.htm.en (english page)
file.htm.fr (french page)
file.htm.htm (default,identical to index.htm.en)

A person types yoursite/file.htm : The person whose browser is set to English gets the first, French gets the second and, if no preference is set, the third.

To enable this, in htaccess or server config, put

Options +Multiviews
AddLanguage en .en
AddLanguage fr .fr

Mark

[nafmo]

Content negotiation is probably the best solution here, and make sure that all your links are language-independent. I do this for my personal site, where most pages are only available in Swedish and English, but where I have translated some into Norwegian and German.

I got my general setup from how the Debian web site is organized (as I am involved in the translation), it used content negotiation to serve a vast amount of translations, but the number of pages translated vary from one (the front page) to over a thousand (almost entire site) depending on the language.