multi-language web application: is it possible?

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From: Elim Qiu <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: multi-language web application: is it possible?
Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 08:20:20 -0600
Message-ID: <01ce01c78e57$5a071120$6400a8c0@grace> (raw)

I have many tables like the table Person:below, in mysql database.

person_id, first_name,last_name, mi, gb_first_name, gb_last_name, b5_first_name, b5_last_name, gender, dob

where different columns storing strings in different encodings. At anytime, a web user can switch the language and the application will get the values in the right columns to generate web pages. The purpose of Multi-language tables is to make multilanguage dynamic content management easier for web applications.  For example, to add a person record, the user enter the English name, then switch the session language to gb2312, enter the Chinese name in gb2312, and then switch the session language to big5, enter the name in big5. And then commit the data into the database. The whole thing sounds complicated but can be treated as a pattern and let a framework to take care of those and the code can be as clean as a single language app. I actually have the framework that works well for me with mysql database.

I'm trying to port the app to pgsql database but got trouble doing so. I can read and set a row with multiple languages (in some paricular cases), but cannot do queries like  (gb_first_name = 'A' and b5_first_name = 'B') with A a gb2312 string, B a big5 string. The tables are of unicode encoded, and the dbclient encoding is set to GBK. The application's char set are selectable by user among iso-8859-1,gb2312 and big5.

I didn't do anything about language encoding in mysql database, it just worked for me. At least with english, gb2312 and big5 altogether in a table like table Person above. I noticed that (english, gb2312, big5, Jp) cannot work together even in mysql database.  My approach seems fine with most western languages

So after all such experimental work, I still don't know how to make a real multi language web app such that the languages are switchable within the same session. 

Any suggestions?  Any web application known to be able to solve the problem? Thanks

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