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language selection
[Article still incomplete]
You've done it, your foo.com site is now multilingual. You need now to think if it is not already done at how users will be able to switch to one language version to another. Unfortunatelly there is no one-size-fit-all solution for implementing language selection. The best solution for you will depend on:
- The relationships between the sites: Are your translated sites an exact copy of your main site? Are they totally different? If your sites are totally different, the may be offering a language selection menu on the front page only is acceptable. If the site are identical then may be you need to offer the user to switch language at any time.
- The number of languages available: You have much more freedom when dealing with 2 languages than when dealing with 20 or 30.
Automatic language selection
There are a number of steps you can take to automaticelly guess the language that a user desire:
- cookies: If the user has already visited the site then why not use the language his was using when he last visited this would avoid that he/she has to select his/her favorite language each time
- accept-language: The HTTP request-header contains the users prefered languages. Use them!
- geolocation: This solution may not work well for all countries but is used more and more
Usually automatic language selection is done with a mix of these three solutions.
Language menu
No matter how good your automatic language detection, you need to offer the possibility to your user to manually switch language.
- avoid flags: They are a poor indicator of a language and have a political meaning that may offend some users
- Use native language names: Prefer to use "Deutsh" and "français" instead of "German" or "French"
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Related directory category:
Programming > User Interface
Article submitted by: Thierry Sourbier
Last modified: 2008-05-03
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