Re: Multilingual table design questions

Jon Heggland wrote:

> In article <xn0eippie1uf6t001_at_news-south.connect.com.au>, murdoc_0
> @hotmail.com says...
> > Personally, I believe translation is purely a presentation function,
> > rather than a data/business function. I would store the text in
> > whatever language you want as a base level (English, probably),
> > then when displaying the text, translate it. This cuts down on the
> > database size, and leaves all the translation in the Presentation
> > layer. Also, your database schema does not need to change every
> > time a new language becomes supported.
>
> Doesn't this just move the problem to the Presentation layer? You will
> still need to design a translation database there.

It does, but it defines the translation as a presentation transformation, rather than a separate entity, or attribute of an entity, as would be the case if the implementation was done in the Database layer.

Some languages have built-in translation frameworks that provide the translation functionality - all the developer needs to supply is a list of words and their translations. The framework then uses this information to translate the text. Phrases can also be done this way, so that the correct grammer is maintained.

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