Hello, i have a big question about how effectively implement translation (at least 5 languages and more) for huge site?

I`m currently working on huge site that already built, but there is no language support in design (architecture) at all. So, i need to implement something with smallest changes in whole system. There are some templating engine used and all pages parsing from that templates.

For example, facebook have very dynamic system, and huge amount language-dependent text pieces inside templates. How they implementing translations ?

I have only 2 ideas how to do that:

1. Keep different language versions of all templates.
- : you need to keep them synchronized all the time
+ : easy to implement, less system changes

2. Use word binginds. For example, in template you set variable $lng_varname, and just keep switching it to specified language value of variable.
- : tons of work, additional modules in control panel, more system changes
+ : flexible user interface

And i dont really know which way to follow.
Any ideas ?

Well, if I were you, I would go with option 2. Mainly because it's a big site; so in the long run, much less work than the alternative option. I've never done anything like this before, but a quick Google search brought this up:

http://searchwarp.com/swa4462.htm

Hope it's helpful.
- Steve

i feel you can add Google's translation gadget in your website...

Originally Posted by Earnersguide

i feel you can add Google's translation gadget in your website...

Is that what the force tells you?

That would work, but not well. Those kind of automated translation tools typically generate fairly poor translations. Its usually enough to understand the meaning of the text, but not easy to read.

Automated translation would probably deter a lot of non-english speakers from your site.

I agree with Matt on automated translation, have the pages translated by real people.

Implement language structures (site/langcode/page.ext), these don't need to actually exist on the site, if you are hosted on Apache you can use mod_alias to redirect to the page that extracts the properly translated page from a database.