While I can understand the impulse that leads to an attempted quick and dirty solution, keeping different versions of the text near where they are used will lead to an unhealthy intertwining of internationalization and everything else in your program. So adding a new language means auditing the whole thing each time. Instead the people that I know have tackled internationalization are uniform in their belief that what you really want to do is create a separation of presentation and content.

The pattern that I have most often seen mentioned for doing this is called Model-View-Controller or MVC for short. You have a different view for each language you support.

Does this take more work and thought up front to implement? Yes. But as with any programming problem, unless you have factored out what needs to change, changing it will be a very hard task. And if you are going to create an international application, you won't just be asked to do it in English and French. Rather you will need to go do it in a lot of languages, and many of those will be added by people chosen more for their knowledge of those languages than for programming skill...

In reply to Re (tilly) 1: Perl Programs That Support Multiple (Human) Languages by tilly
in thread Perl Programs That Support Multiple (Human) Languages by John M. Dlugosz

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