Multi-language version website construction database design and factors to consider

Due to the increasing use of dynamic applications on the web, a significant number of sites will also be using files or databases to store application information, so it is important to pay special attention if the content stored in the file or database is related to the language. For information stored in the database, there are several ways to support multiple languages:
1, multi-lingual support at the database level: A separate database is created for each language, and users in different languages operate different databases.
2, multi-lingual support at the table level: Separate tables are created for each language, and users in different languages manipulate different tables, but they are in the same database.
3, multi-lingual support at the field level: Separate fields are created for each language in the same table, and users in different languages manipulate different fields in the same table.
Because there is a large amount of information in the database (such as flags, encodings, numbers, etc.) that are used for internal processing, language-independent, so support for multiple languages at the database level can result in a huge waste of space, the biggest problem with supporting multiple languages at the field level is that once you need to support a new language, you need to modify the table Maintenance is cumbersome and scalability is not good.
In contrast, it is good to support multiple languages at the table level, because not all tables need to support multiple languages, and for language-independent tables, users of different languages share a set of language-related tables that are built according to the type of language they support, and users in different languages access different tables. This makes maintenance simple, save storage space, even if it is more convenient to expand, as long as the need to support multi-lingual tables, more set up.
Before you design and develop a multilingual version of a website, consider the following factors:
1, the choice of applying character set
A corporate website targeting a country of different languages is bound to provide product and sales information in multiple languages to meet customers and partners in different languages around the world, including French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, and so on. But there is one problem that is easily overlooked by web designers. This is the character set problem for the site.
Generally we use the Simplified Chinese (GB2312) character set, and for multilingual websites, the Chinese character set may make your hard work fall short. The reason is simple: this insignificant little character set is in mischief.
In the field of computer application, there are dozens of different character sets, and when customers browse different language pages, they tend to be garbled because of the incompatible character set used by each other. When we browse some foreign websites, we often have to switch back and forth between the various character sets in order to see the information on the website normally.
Imagine: If a website provides a variety of languages, including Chinese, English, French, German, and so on, the content is full, and the design is beautiful. We are in the Chinese language encoding environment to browse these non-Chinese version of the page is very perfect, now a French customer for your product has been interested, when he went to the French page a look-garbled a lot, and maybe even the entire layout is a collapse of confusion. What's the point of having your website make a big effort?
Therefore, the Unicode character set should be the ideal choice for websites that provide a multilingual version.
It is a double-byte encoding mechanism of the character set, whether east or Western text, in Unicode is used in two bytes to represent, so at least can define 65,536 different characters, almost all of the world's current universal language of every character. Therefore, in the design and development of multilingual sites, it is important to note that non-Chinese page character set is defined as "utf-8" format, that is:
√:
X:
This step is important because it is a very, very thankless job to change the character set after the page is ready, and sometimes it may even be necessary to re-enter the text of the site from scratch.
2. Language writing habits & navigation structure
Some countries have language writing habits from right to left, such as Arabic, Persian and Hebrew used in many Middle Eastern regions. If your market target is a country of these languages, you need to consider these special language writing habits in your website design. And if you're using a vertical navigation bar in your site's navigation structure design, you should put it on the right instead of the left as we used to.
3. Database-driven Web site
For a database-driven Web site, especially when customers can leave a message and add information to the database, they should consider how to realize the collection and retrieval of data from different languages in a technical way.
4. Search Engine & Market Promotion
Search engine Optimization (SEO) is really a big problem for multi-lingual websites. It is also important to note that not all major search engines will support multilingual web pages, which is why a multi-lingual website is not necessarily included in all major search engines. Of course there is no such problem with Google.
Second, what search engines or portals do you use to search for different target countries and groups of customers that different languages are targeting? Just as we are accustomed to using a homegrown Baidu search, the most widely used in some language countries may still be the search engine or portal site in their home country.

Source: http://www.phpstudio.info/show-97-86-1.html

Multi-language version website construction database design and factors to consider