[Sigia-l] displaying translated docs

[Gael Laurans]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 16:22:39 -0500, Jason Pryslak <jpryslak at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Situation:
> I am working on a document repository that is all in english, but will
> now include translations of some documents. only about 50% of the
> content will be translated into 5 different languages.
>
> The question:
> what is the best way to allow people to access the translated versions
> of the documents?

An approach to this problem which seems reasonably successful is that
of the official sites of the european union (http://europa.eu.int/). I
just noticed that they redesigned it completly but the basic idea is
that the language are designated by the two letter ISO code (i.e. EN
for english, DE for german, FR for french).

The new site detects the web browser language settings but allows you
to view a page in another language using the dropdown at the top of
the page. Links to documents that are not available in your current
language are flagged with a small icon using, again, the ISO language
code.

The older site might be more interesting to you given your constraints :
1. The user choose on the home page in which language he wants to
browse the site
http://web.archive.org/web/20020813052246/europa.eu.int/
2. On any given page there is a menu bar on the top with the list of
all available languages
http://web.archive.org/web/20020916010045/europa.eu.int/index_ns_da.htm

Another example you might study is the portal from the swiss federal
administration : http://www.admin.ch/
There, all available languages are simply listed in the top-right
corner. Every language name is written in full in the language itself.
For four or five languages (vs. 20 in the UE) this solution is still
practicable but on the swiss site every document is translated in
every language or at least in the three main languages (rumantsch
having a slightly different status in the country).

Gael Laurans