Multi language site for euroland

[jheath]

Has anyone any experience of this or how it can be done in Actinic?
Either I'd like a homepage which allows users to click on a flag for the languge of their choice, after which they browse and shop the store and complete checkout entirely in the language they've chosen.

Or a multilingual site with common product titles but short descriptions in four euro languages. This would mean having field names in checkout in every language seperated my /.

What's the best way for actinic to handle this? Four separate sites or is there a clever way to do it? If there is a clever way to do it, please speak slowly because I'm from Lincoln! And apologies if the subject has been covered before, but I couldn't find anything in knowledge base etc.

[RuralWeb]

Use a language widget or bablefish

[chris ashdown]

I dont think anyone has done this yet since v7, and i think the problem was many items are hard coded but may well be wrong

The main things would be to run the sites in their own home countries ie a french site hosted in france with .fr, this would give you the best google search terms to get the customers

Actual language may be less important as many millions now read and speck English, so whilst it would be nice to offer say French descriptions and keys etc, for some nich goods it may not be required, whilst for others it would probably be essential

[pixelhaus]

With the current state of the pound, there has never been a better time to sell into Europe. We're currently translating one actinic site into German and Italian (to be hosted in those countries). We also have another site in multiple versions of the same site in French, German, Italian and Dutch.

SEO is more of a challenge as it's not unusual for different nations to use totally different terminology.

There are no substitute for proper translations as machine translation just looks lazy and embarrassing. Expect to pay £70-90 per 1000 words for common languages. There aren't any shortcuts to this I'm afraid!

[Sean Williams]

We're planning on German and .EU sites in the new year.
Richard - have you decided on a foreign host yet, and if so, why the one you have chosen.
Also, do you have a recommendation for a translating outfit?
The rates you quote sound quite reasonable for pukka translation.

TIA

[DeDanan]

Hi All,
I am also planning multi euro zone language sites. The translation of the product descriptions can be handled as stated above by outsourcing the translation.
For me the problem is to change the language in the checkout buttons or other areas that are by default in English.
Any suggestions ?
Regards

Jim

[PeterThake]

Multi language sites

If, as suggested, you run several sites each in their own language and each hosted in their respective countries, assuming you are only actually doing the business end and shipping from one country (the UK), how do you keep all the stock levels maintained across all sites simultaneously? Also, how do you manage changes to the web sites so all have the same content but have different languages?

If you use DIVs or some other method to have one site containing the diferent language versions, how do you host the site in different countries?

Am I right in thinking that if multi-language, multi currency, multi-national web sites are the way I need to go, that is is time to move on from Actinic?