Hi all, just finished my website (English version) by using the software, have to upload it still, but so far very satisfied with the software, thanks.

To keep it simple and organized I came up with the following idea, not knowing if it is possible , all suggestions are welcome:

My website will be available in English (main website - total of 5 pages) and also in Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese. The content of the pages will change (of course) into the other languages, however it will be only 2/3 of most pages.

For example: The homepage will only change 3 textboxes into the desired language of the visitor (after clicking on one of the language links).

Question: Do I really need to make or 'add' a new page (meaning 5 pages x 4 languages = 20 webpages total) or is it possible to only swap the content in the 3 textboxes to the chosen language?

Thanks in advance,

Tulio

I have a similar situation, although with only two languages, so I would also be very interested in hearing what ideas people may have about this. I am currently working on the assumption that I will need two complete, parallel sets of pages, one for each language.
(EDIT: Sorry, Pedro (or Tulio?), that I don't have a better solution for you, but maybe others will!)

Thanks Per for your reaction, saw your site, esta bonito (!), just one quick question on your comment:



By this you mean that you 'add' pages to your current project (website) and not creating a new website and than link it the the main version (in my case the english version) and thus have (in my case) will have 4 websites in 4 languages, all uploaded to one (main english) website?

By the way, don't even know if my above comment/question is possible, just trying to figure out while working on it! Thanks!

Pedro

Hi Pedro,
Here is what I'm planning to do (unless someone here comes up with better ideas): I will have 8 main pages in English and 8 corresponding pages in Portuguese. All these 16 pages will be on the "same website" and will all reside in the same root directory of the server. Each English page will have a little Mozambican flag with a link to "Em Português", which will take you to the corresponding Portuguese page and each Portuguese page will have a little English flag with a link to "In English". The English pages will all have the same main menu (in English) to the 8 English pages and the Portuguese pages will have a menu (in Portuguese) to the 8 Portuguese pages.
Somehow, I think I am making this sound much more complicated than it really is! Let me know if it still sounds muddy!

Hi Per, it is clear your explanation, I will probably do the same as you did, thanks. Meanwhile awaiting if somebody will provide a better solution to our challenge.
Good luck with your website!

Coding a web page that will dynamically change what text is displayed based on browser's language is, I believe out of scope of what you can do in VSD. I'm not expert in multilingual pages but I suspect you even have to change charsets in the page header unless all languages are using a standard English one. VSD has no provision for swapping out header file info based on some input, all that is fixed at export time.

My best guess is such things will require creative and extensive CSS styling, perhaps even some PHP to serve up portions of the web page header, and VSD wasn't intended for such complex, dynamic pages.

What about maybe seeing if there's a plugin of any type or script of any type that will put a Translator on your page for you? there might be some out there, I've never looked for anything like that, but I would surely imagine someone's created something like that by now.

Hi Jo Ann,
Thanks for joining in on this!
The automatic translators provided by Bing and by Google seem to be getting more and more sophisticated these days and can certainly be very good, at least for "emergency" use when you just want to get a basic understanding of a web page that is in a language unknown to you. I have not seriously considered them as a permanent solution to a multilingual site, though, since you lose control of the content. All kinds of strange, unpredictable statements may appear on your site - and you may not even be aware of them if you don't have a good understanding of that 'other' language yourself. Some of the auto translations can be quite funny actually, but maybe not always in the way you would like!

Having said that, depending on the content there may very well be a place for automatic translations on some websites, in which case the solution would be simple: - just put in the appropriate Google or Bing translator button with associated coding/scripts and you're all set. In my case, though, it wouldn't work very well for what I am doing now.

So, it's back to good old-fashioned, manual translation with judgments on word choice and syntax and all the rest of it...
There is also, sometimes, an additional aspect to consider, namely that you may be addressing quite different audiences in the different languages. E.g. you may use a 'home-' language for a domestic audience, who may have a certain familiarity with the subject, and use English for a broader, international audience, who may not have that familiarity. The two versions would then tend to be written in slightly different ways.

yeah you have a good point there Per, so many different ways to address things in the different languages. If you need to run it by us if you come across something you're not sure of though, through it in the break room I'm sure many of us will be able to give you or anyone needing to verify a translation some help

Hey,

Here's a link for the Google Translator with easy access to over 50 languages. Just embed the code into your site.

http://translate.google.com/translate_tools

Google is truly the king of the internet.

I have a tourism based site and we get foreigners from all parts of the world using this tool and they love it!