Setting Up a Multilingual Web Site

Ektron supports multilingual content. This section lists steps to follow when setting up such a site.

In web.config, make sure multilingual support is enabled. See Working with Multi-Language Content
Set a default content language, one that will be used by the majority of your site’s content.
If you had a previous version of Ektron and selected a default language on the Database Upgrade Utility, be sure that default language matches the one in web.config. See Working with Multi-Language Content
Enable languages your site will support. See Working with Multi-Language Content
Add language selection function to templates. See Working with Multi-Language Content
Create a metadata definition for each supported language. See Working with Metadata
Create or translate content. See Creating HTML Content and Translating Content into Another Language
Set up approval chains for new content. See Multi-Language Approval Chains
Set up multilingual collections. See Working with Collections in a Multi-Language System
Set up multilingual menus. See Working with Menus in a Multi-Language System
Set up multilingual taxonomies. See Multi-Language Support for Taxonomies
Modify text on templates. See Modifying Page Content Based on Language Selection
Translate graphics. See Modifying Images Based on Language Selection

Creating Web pages that support several languages

Creating Web Pages that Support Several Languages

When thinking about setting up your Web site to support content in multiple languages, consider the following tasks:

Create language-specific content, menus, and collections—See Working with Multi-Language Content, Working with Collections in a Multi-Language System, and Working with Menus in a Multi-Language System. After you create these items, have the page invoke that item dynamically. When Ektron receives a request to display an item that includes a language and item id number, it returns the language-specific edition. To learn about letting the user select a language from a Web page, see Working with Multi-Language Content.
Adjust template content to user language—Modifying Page Content Based on Language Selection
Translate text in images—Modifying Images Based on Language Selection

Modifying page content based on language selection

Modifying Page Content Based on Language Selection

If a template’s text should change according to a user’s language selection, use a case statement to provide the language-specific content. A good example of this is the template used on the RC international sample site.

Assume you want to create editions of the menu that runs under the header in 3 languages: English, French, and German:

NOTE: This procedure uses the header.asp file delivered with the RC international sample site as an example.

In the template file, declare each menu option a variable. For example:

Dim t_search, t_products, t_support, t_news, t_careers, t_calendar, t_home, 
t_login,  t_site_lang, t_contact, t_copyright, calendar_id

Enter case statements that provide the value of each variable in each language. (1031 is the decimal code for German, 1036 for French.) The following illustrates how to do this for the search menu option.
```
Select Case ContentLanguage
        Case "1031"
        	t_search = "Suche"
        Case "1036"
        	t_search = “Recherche"
        Case else
        	t_search = "Search"
        End Select
```

Now, when a user visits a page controlled by this template and selects French or German as the site language, the page is refreshed and the translated values appear on the template.

Modifying images based on language selection

Modifying Images Based on Language Selection

Many Web page templates also include images that require translation. You can set up templates to invoke images in the user-selected language by following these steps.

Add to the library each image that should change when the language changes. For example, if your company’s tag line is translated into 3 languages, upload the 3 images into the library.
It‘s a good idea to include the language in the title of the image. For example, tagline_English, tagline_French.
Create a separate content block for each language-specific image. Each content block must have a unique ID number.
Insert the appropriate image into a content block for each language. For example, insert the tagline_English image into the English content block.
Insert the content blocks into the appropriate templates. For example, insert the English content block into the English template.