Multiple Language Websites

[arisia]

Hi,

Can anyone advise how best to set up content for a public facing website which needs to be available in multiple languages selectable by the user ?

How does Alfresco achieve this ?

Cheers
Rob

[pmonks]

This basically boils down to a content modeling and (in some cases) repository layout exercise.  Some possible approaches:

1. Model each content type so that it includes nested elements for translations (either per element or by repeating the entire complexType once per translation, with a "locale" element for each nested instance).


2. Model each content type as normal but add in two fields:
   • Locale - to identify the language of this translation
   
   
   • Parent translation - an optional element containing a reference to the parent translation
3. Structure your repository with a folder per locale, and then maintain an identical structure underneath each "locale root".  Documents would not explicitly contain information about which locale they're in - their location in the folder hierarchy would indicate this.

I personally lean towards option #2, for a couple of reasons:

• each content item explicitly states what language it is in, which (if the locale element is indexed) allows for dynamic language based querying - very useful if your web application has a requirement such as "look for the content in the visitor's browser locale, if it's not found look for any content in the language of the visitor's browser locale, if it's not found look for any English language version of the content".


• each translation of a content item is managed as an independent asset, so they can be workflowed / submitted etc. independently of one another


• you can walk the translation hierarchy to find out where a given translation of a particular content item came from.  In many cases this hierarchy only contains two levels (eg. everything is translated directly from en_US), but in some cases I've seen a requirement for strings of translations eg. en_US -> es_ES -> es_MX.


• it does not rely on any particular repository layout, thereby allowing you to optimise that along other dimensions (eg. ease of finding content, performance on the runtime / delivery side, etc.)

Cheers,
Peter

[joshna]

Hi Monks,

Can you pls explain the content modeling for multilingual website in detail.I had referred the link below but i am not able to underatand it.Can u explain me in detail.

http://forums.alfresco.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=12314‍

Thanks and regards,
Joshna

[iluy]

Hello pmonks, I'm just getting into setting up a website in three languages (en, jp and zh)

My question is: since the last posts on this thread has anything changed for alfresco 3.4.d? Is there an easier way to set up multiple language websites without having to go trough any of the processes you describe? Is there some new feature or add-on I can install that would allow me to set up content in different languages, set up a config file and let alfresco handle the rest? (Something like what drupal does for multiple language sites)

If this is not available in the community version do you know if it is available for the enterprise version?

Thanks a lot, really appreciate your input.

Isaac