[interchange-i18n] Newbie - converting all product data to multiple languages -using multiple tables

[Michel Matte]

Dog Tags wrote:

>
> What I want to do is 1) offer up to 6 languages on the site, 2) translate all site navigation and other buttons, and 3) also translate all product data.
>

You can place translations in locale.txt or in a separate file: yourlocale.cfg (
i. e. es_ES.cfg) in yourcat/config.  This file can then be included in your
catalog.cfg with include statement or incorporated as a Here document.but the
locale.txt setting take precedence over individual locale files.

Using locale.cfg (one for each translation ) files is more manageable but you have to set tags [L text_no] [/l]
inside the pages and [msg text_no]  [/msg] inside templates.  [LC]...[/LC] tags and translations can also  be used inside pages but appear to be less efficient.

> This would all be accomplished through a Preferences select box type of thing.

The following is from Racke:
You can switch the locale by calling (replace de_DE with the proper locale)
process/locale/de_DE/page/index
instead of
index

The locale is then stored in [scratch mv_locale]


> I imagine that the nav buttons and other standard site features can be translated using a text file,

No, you have to create button gif images for each language.

> but the big thing for me is how to make the product data translated. Should I create a separate table for each language to help with search speed? I'm using mysql.

You can add fields in product by deleting the Mysql and recreating from a txt file.  I am using GDBM and I edit the txt file and restart Interchange (not sure about MySQL). These fields are then referenced  by the DescriptionField defined for each locale in
catalog.cfg.  I didn't bother to do it I just created different products and selected the correct one depending on [L] ..[/L] tags. This is not the recommended method for accounting.