Multi-language websites: any advice?

bliako has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Esteemed Monks,

I am trying to create a multi-language website. The backend is Mojolicious::Lite with templates handled by Text::Xslate.

Here is a brief sketch of how I think I want this to be, assuming a website of just one webpage which contains just one "<button>Hello</button>":

there should be a generic page where content is written in english, to contain something like: "<button>[[%% english:Hello %%]]</button>". This page will be used to produce all other language-specific pages, occassionally and when new content is added. This procedure should not happen every time a user accesses a page, obviously.
There is a dictionary somewhere which translates 'Hello' from english to all the other supported languages. That's the responsibility of the website maintainer to create. I am not looking for automatic translations.
A template engine is used to replace all "[[%% english:Hello %%]]" and produce the various other webpages living in /en/index.html, /fr/index.html, etc.
Produced webpages may also be templated but their template tags should not be the same as the language-template tags [[%% ... %%]]. Basically something to discriminate between the two levels of templating content.

So, is there anything like this available already? Or if I am going to start from scratch, any hints/advice?

many thanks, bliako

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Re: Multi-language websites: any advice? by hippo (Archbishop) on Oct 11, 2024 at 11:15 UTC
I rather like the approach outlined in Re: Multilingual design - did you see that? produce the various other webpages living in `/en/index.html`, `/fr/index.html`, etc. Do consider using MultiViews instead of (or at least in addition to) this. It's a much more elegant solution, IMHO. 🦛	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Multi-language websites: any advice? by bliako (Abbot) on Oct 11, 2024 at 16:37 UTC
thanks I have not seen that. From what I understand, it "translates" the page every time it is served. I need to clarify that I am looking for a system which manages the translation and creates translated pages ready to be served. Once created there is no translation on these pages. When new content is added to the "mother" page, the system re-creates all the translated pages. I need => I think it is more efficient for the server.	[reply]
Re^3: Multi-language websites: any advice? by cavac (Prior) on Oct 15, 2024 at 10:00 UTC
Yes, it translates on every serve. That allows to use the translation tool integrated into the website. In my case, all translations are cached in RAM, so this is reasonably fast. It takes up only a small fraction of the time needed to serve a completed document. There are also authentication checks, flood checks, bot checks, database access, logging, compression for network transport and a multitude of other things that have to happen when you serve highly dynamic content on a public server. So, at least in my case, on-the-fly translations really don't really make much of a difference... Of course, nobody is stopping you from putting your documents through TT and caching the results. PerlMonks XP is useless? Not anymore: XPD - Do more with your PerlMonks XP Also check out my sisters artwork and my weekly webcomics	[reply]
Re: Multi-language websites: any advice? by etj (Priest) on Oct 15, 2024 at 12:31 UTC
Something like Mojolicious::Plugin::TagHelpers might be a good starting point. Or you might consider extending Mojolicious::Renderer to handle templates with names like `name.en.html.ep` (where "en" could be other languages).	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Multi-language websites: any advice? by harangzsolt33 (Deacon) on Oct 15, 2024 at 16:16 UTC
Just want to say that sometimes the foreign language site has minor differences. For example, a phone distributor may sell only certain models in the US and different models in Europe. Or a news website might display one thing in the US and different content in Europe. So, the website is not necessarily going to be the exact same. So, you may need multiple different "generic pages" for each region depending on what the site is all about. You might not need this, just thought I would mention it. Sometimes these international websites can be very complicated..	[reply]
Re^2: Multi-language websites: any advice? by choroba (Cardinal) on Oct 17, 2024 at 11:45 UTC
Also notice that the language of a page should not be decided by the region of the user. I hate it when I go to Finland and Google starts showing me everything in Finnish which I barely understand. `map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]\|\|0,1}[\\|\|{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^ARGV,3]`	[reply] [d/l]