Hi,
My name is Paul Norman. I am from Chicago, IL. I am relatively new to Web design but am learning fast.

I have a friend/client who's an attorney. I am building his web site here in Coffeecup. He wants his site to be not only English, but Spanish, Polish and Chinese (Mandarin) as well.

I know that this can be done, but I do not how how to begin to implement that function here on his site.

He has requested a drop down menu with links to the different languages, howver I am not so sure that is the best way to structure this multilingual site.

Can anyone here help?

Your advice and guidance is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Paul N.

What exactly are you asking? How to make the drop-down list, or how to get the site translated or what?

The navigation between the languages can be made with the css menu designer built into HTML Editor.

Regarding the languages, who is delivering the text to this site anyway? If your client speaks these languages, he should be able to give you the translated text too. If not, or if he has no time, there are professional translators around which cost money, which you will have to pass on to your friend. What you should NOT do, and this is important: Don't use some online translator you may find for the text in other languages. None of them are good enough, and you'll end up with a product which is barely legible in those foreign languages.

I have made several multilingual sites, but I have made the same pages in all languages (for examples, check out http://kandoraservice.de (left side of the page, I have had nothing to do with the right side!), http://www.norwayroots.com or http://www.johnsflats.com). I know there is a php-MySql solution to this, where the pages can be generated with the language requested, but so far I have not gone that way.

Inger,

Thank you for you post.

I do not need help on the actual menus, but yes, I need to find out how to convert to the different languages .

Any additional information would be very helpful.

Thanks.

Paul N

You didn't say WHICH of the CoffeeCup programmes you are using for the site, the HTML Editor or Visual Site Designer. If the former, you can use php commands if you are php savvy. You would also have to build a MySql database with the text in all the desired languages.

There are people in here who would be able to guide you through this, but I'm not one of them. But anyway, first you need to have the translated text before you can put it into some data base tables.

I'll follow this discussion, and if you don't get any further help, I'll see if I can call in someone.