If you aim to create a multi-language  website using PHP + Mysql , remember the following tips.

• You can use mysql database for this purpose rather than using separate language files as usual content management system does.
• You can create a table with following structure for this purpose.Table: muli-lang
  string_id:
  page_id:
  en:
  arb:
  fr:
• Here string_id is the code for getting content  eg: welcome_message
  page_id is for saving in which page the content belongs to.  eg: home_page, login_page etc
  In field en, you have to enter the message in english,eg: Welcome to my website
  In arb field you can enter the corresponding translation in arab. eg: مرحبا بكم في موقعي
• If you need to add more languages, it is just adding one more column to this table and put all translated values.
• Write a class or functions in PHP to retrieve all the informations.
  eg: function get(language_id, page_id) returns corresponding message
• Use session to save lang value. For example if you switch to french, set a variable lang= fr and use this variable to decide which column is to access from multi-lang table.eg: the sql will be , SELECT $lang FROM multi-lang WHERE string_id = ‘welcome_message’
• For some string fragment like about_us, contact_us etc, it has global scope; then leave page_id as blank
• To avoid multiple calling of functions to get translation, write a common function to get all translation for a particular page_id as array, and use this array all through the page. Thus you can avoid mysql query multiple times.
  eg: function get_all($page_id) returns array, say $Translate of all strings replacement. $Translate['login_message'], $Translate['login_error']
• Additional things to remember:
• Use this meta tab in html header
  <meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text /html; charset=UTF-8” />
  to show all languages
• Create my_sql table in UTF-8 format
• Execute the following query before executing any retrieval queries. Otherwise you may get ????? for language like Arabic, Hindi, Chinese etc.
  mysql_query(“SET CHARACTER SET ‘utf8′”, $link);

I hope these information may help you when you develop a multi-langauge support website

Thank you
Sajith

Tags: arab, engilsh, featured, french, hindi, multi, multi-language, multi-langugage support, php, support