Chapter 15. Internationalization and localization
This chapter covers
- The differences between translating languages and idioms
- Using Zend_Locale to translate idioms
- Using Zend_Translate to translate languages
- Integrating Zend_Translate into a Zend Framework application
Most websites are written in a single language for a single country, and this makes life easier for both the designers and developers. Some projects, however, require more than this. Some countries have more than one language (in Wales, both English and Welsh are used) and some websites are intended to target all the countries that the company operates in. To create a website targeted at different countries and cultures, significant changes to the application are required to support multiple languages and the different formats for dates, times, currency, and so on, that each country uses.
We’re going to look at what needs to be done to make a multilingual website, then look at how the Zend_Locale and Zend_Translate components of Zend Framework help to make the process easier. Finally, we’ll implement a second language into the Places website to show how to create a localized application.