Dual Language Website Eng/Afr

[Dion Disco]

Hi very clever forumites ;-)

I am not a developer - asking here on behalf of a friend

Need some advice about standard practice in designing a website in Eng/ Afr language

The client have 2 co.za domains registered - in Eng and Afr (slight spelling difference in each)

The product, layout and website will be identical in every way - except for the text
When visiting the English site, there will be an Afrikaans button that will reroute and visa versa

My questions

Will this be regarded as 2 websites as far as billing is concerned ?
Reduced fee for the 2nd site ?

Would it be easier to host the 2 sites seperatedly ?
Can both sites be integrated in 1 wordpress templates (dual pages)

Open to any suggestions

Thanx

 

[SYNERGY]

You can integrate it into one website and use an online translation service. Their not always accurate thou.

Rather have to separate websites with a button referring the other.

Second website should have a nominal fee, reduced.

 

[Dion Disco]

Thanx for that

Just to be more clear - it is a medical website and the language text will be supplied
Can't imagine what Google Translate would do to the Afr site ;-)

 

[sp4ceman]

if you have both english and afrikaans versions of the text you want to display you don't need a translation service.
just have the user select his language and show that.
i would have one site, with the language defaulting to english but also having an afrikaans version.
i would also make both afrikaans and english versions available in the sitemap so google can index both.

 

[_kabal_]

Definately 1 site with i18n

 

[Kilgore_Trout_Redux]

Is the website designed to use some sort of CMS?

I would say have both domains redirected to a single website created using a CMS that supports multiple language versions of the same site.

 

[GreGorGy]

Years ago, I designed, populated and maintained a 3-language (English, French, Arabic) website. The content changed every two months, with the previous stuff still being available. The structure was such that each iteration would be stored with its date but that the site defaulted to the newest. It was about 40 pages every iteration. I was supplied the pics and text. English took 2 days (resizing pics, layout, etc). French took a day and Arabic about 3 hours. I would do the English so that it appeared exactly how I wanted it, pics and all. Then I would replace the English with French. On previewing the new layout, my experience was that French took about 25% more words to say the same thing. I suspect that may be the case with Afrikaans too. That then required making sure nothing was broken but generally, it held together pretty well and fixes were few and far between.

I'd say treat it in your mind as one site.

 

[animal531]

You need your site/controls/text to be smart enough to get their contents from the supplied text. Instead of for example a static button saying "Hello", you might on your initialise check the currently selected language, and update all controls/text dynamically.

It is only 1 site, you can have different web addresses pointing to the same site (although if you want you can split it in two).

I haven't used wordpress etc yet, so I'm not sure what built-in options it supplies for multilanguage.

 

[envo]

Definately 1 site with i18n

^ this

As to what to bill for. It's two separate sites, so bill 2 separate sites. Charge for the design once if it's the exact same. But some effort will go into both sites to bring them up with the eng/afr languages so that is worth some money for your time.

 

[Max Headroom]

Definately 1 site with i18n

^Yes
I've build a few multilingual sites before. A good CMS will have this functionality built in. I use Drupal, so I can't speak for the others.
But basically, it is one site, with the two domains pointing to the same site. You set up which language the site must show in according to this domain (Other ways is to have a language switcher or something like: af.mysite.co.za and en.mysite.co.za with mysite.co.za the default language, normally english).

Don't bother with the online translators. Best to do the translations yourself. I have found that, especially with Afrikaans, there is a certain way clients wants to express themselves. And as you said, it's medical, eish bud, good luck .

As for doing the translations, first build the site in English, then translate. Two reasons: a) There are always something that needs translations, so first get it all done. b) You can get a translation file (.po file) then use poeditor (GIYF) to go through all the translations.

In Drupal, we also have the function of having content translation related with each other. So if you create content in English with say image uploads, you can share the same images with the Afrikaans content, with out having to upload again.

As I said, I only use Drupal, can't speak for the others, but my suggestion would be to select a good CMS that has i18n functionality for this.