new site in 5 languages

any advice on file structure, and accents?

[stavs]

I'm working on a new website at the moment, and for the first time, I'll be working with 5 languages;

English
French
Italian
Croatian
German

The main index page will be the english version and visitors will notice on the page a set of flags to denote the 5 languages. When a user clicks on a flag, an alternative homepage will open.

What I am trying to determine - perhaps from those with some experience in creating multi-language sites - is;

1. the 'correct' way to name the 5 'index' pages? I suspect there must be a logical approach to this that would make life easier and avoid confusion. I would need to make sure that the file structure is google-friendly.

2. are there any pitfalls to using several languages that I should know about?

3. how do I go about using different alphabets, so that the 'accents' on the letters are shown? i'm not even sure, at this stage, how to type it, let alone display it.

any advice would be much appreciated.

[pageoneresults]

Hmmm, I've not done one in multiple languages before but the approach I would take might look like this...

www.domain.com/croation/
www.domain.com/english/
www.domain.com/french/
www.domain.com/german/
www.domain.com/italian/

Now, if budget permitted, I might even look at purchasing country specific TLDs and building the translated content on the applicable domains and then registering them in their country of origin.

[mahlon]

Remember not to use any text in a graphic, that always is annoying when I can read everything but the graphics.

[John_Caius]

Remember that SEs are accent specific - so e.g. pyrenees with the accents and pyrenees without the accents gives different results. You may want to think about whether you want people with an English or foreign keyboard to find your site in the SEs.

[BjarneDM]

as to the accents, you've got to use &<name>; or &#<number>; for all other charactes than those in the english alphabeth. You can find a complete reference here [w3.org...] though I do know of extensions to this list for symbols like telephones and the likes

[sem4u]

It's probably best to name the pages in the home language, e.g.

www.domain.com/english
www.domain.com/francais
www.domain.com/deutsch

[Shakil]

stavs,

there are a number of fellow members at WebmasterWorld who are very knowledgeable in this field,

the 1 name that comes to mind is Eric Jarvis, his website is in at least 13 languages that I know of (probably a lot more, and all languages rank very well).

hopefully Eric may see this post and decide to reply with some pointers to help you out (and me, as my next project involves 6 languages)

also do a site search for "Translation" and all sorts of valuable info starts cropping up.

Shak

[Macguru]

I always try to get separate language sites linked together.

www.potato.com
www.patate.com
www.kartoffel.com
www.patata.com

There is so many advantages to it, you just cant go wrong. Here some very good thread about this topic by rencke.

Translations will get you top rankings in major engines. [webmasterworld.com]

[Rumbas]

Being a sucker for multilingual sites, I agree with Macguru.
If you have the option, go for multiple sites with local domain extensions and link them together. This way you have a good way of building up your linkpop by getting the sites listed on local directories etc. And mind you that some local directories only take local domain extensions, so without them you could cut yourself from some important listings.

As for converisions, some users may prefer dealing with a domain/company that has local presence.

We've had long discussions about this in the European Forum [webmasterworld.com], and I bet you can find a lot more by using the site search:

[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]

[stavs]

This is really getting interesting - thanks for all your help so far, friends.

Going to have to give this some thought... more to consider than what I first realised.