Adding a second language to a site
 

what is the best way??? I am thinking of avoiding the detecting the browser language. I worry about the current google ranking getting blasted. Auto redirects seem bad but is their a easy way to do it where it doesn't effect google? the little flags?

Then just add a new folder for the language and start typing? Subdomain is better? Would like it all on the same site.

any hints or Don't do's?

Thanks

Would also like to know this

add flags and link them to


http://translate.google.com/translat...sina.com.cn%2F

never create a subdomain.... make it an extension of the main domain
eg
domain.com/en/index.shtml
domain.com/fr/index.shtml

the SE will love you better for it...
and *always* detect on browser language

edit-
you can make
domain.com/index.shtml

the default english site with some mod_rewrite if you don't want to screw up your SE rankings

Thanks guy. Getting on it.

Google and your users will love if you follow standards. There's a reason the browser tells you which languages the user prefers, and in which order.

Only html needs to be translated of course, not css, javascript, pics, etc. Partly for that reason, the standard way to do it is to add a language suffix to the filename, such as index.html.de for German. Then just turn on content negotiation and Apache will do the rest.
People much smarter than either of us spent several years designing the standard system. Then other really smart people did a lot of work to make sure that Apache and all of the browsers work well with the standard. Anything you or I come up with eil such compared to what thousands of really smart people have already done for us, so don't reinvent this. It's already fine really well and it's called content negotiation.

See the mod_negotiation docs for other options besides adding a suffix to the file name. Seriously though, people who really know their stuff have put probably thousands of hours into making a system that works really well and you get it for free just by turning the feature on in Apache if it's been turned off. They thought of things like caches. When a Canadian ISP caches your home page, should it be the English version or the French? mod_negotiation makes sure that the ISP cache shows the right thing to the right user. That also makes google.fr very happy.

Btw if you need to prove it to yourself, set your browser or system language to Spanish, then load google.com. Google will give you the Spanish version of their page because google follows the standard and respects your browser preference. they do not redirect you. They just allow negotiation to show the version that matches the language you set in your brower.

So does Google think that's a sign of a good site? They do if they think they are doing the right thing themselves!

Hmm, not entirely correct - I am in France and my system and browser is set to English-UK. Yet whenever I vist google.com I get sent to google.fr. I am to manually opt out of google.fr to say use google.com

:2 cents:

what type of site is it, like static or is it using a cms, a lot of cms modules let you create 2nd, 3rd, etc languages by translating your strings.

That's a slightly different thing. Google.fr has different results than Google.com. It has different content partly because it's affected by different regulatory agreements.
That's a location based and a separate issue from language. For example google.fr, and google.ca are both available in French. The content on each is catered to a specific area.

Google.ca, like google.com, is available in multiple languages. Try switching your browser from Uk English, to US Spanish, for example. Google.com and google.ca will both switch languages.

The US has more Spanish speakers than Spain does. For a Western Hemisphere
Spanish dialect, do you use the Florida flag ir the California flag? Which flag for Arabic?

with joomla and joomfish, you can do as many languages as you see fit ... and what is nice is that it keeps you on the same page, instad of bringing you back to the main ( first ) page ...

Also, joomfish allows you to have different content as it is not translated from google, but entered by the website builder .

Did a lawyer site with French, English and Spanish .. works nicely

For me its a really big problem the language. I have to produce latin girls and translate in the same time to english and spanish, crazy mission, i need more gramatical and english class...

And that's why you don't use flags to represent languages.

Use ISO codes or the language name in the target language.

Example ภาษาไทย for Thai.

I just post some flag icons linking to dedicated google or yahoo translate.

Like. http://mypornsite.com/googletranslate/blahblahlahphp?

No, as if the page has no translation, it will display the default language of the site ...

main page text changes : fisetlegal dot com

an article in one language : fisetlegal dot com/index.php/es/nuestros-textos-en-copropiedad/128-destination-of-the-immovable-part-ii

You see at the top : There are no translations available. and it defaults to the only language for that article.