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    • 36551
    • 416 Posts
    I've got a project coming up that will include a multi-language setup. I've been reading through a bunch of forum discussions on Babel, MigxMultiLang and Lingua. It's apparent to me each of these tools use different approaches and it seems some may be best suited for some situations but not for others.

    However, it's not clear to me how to decide which will work best for which situations. I don't yet have requirements for my project so I can't yet spell out what I'll need. But as a general reference, it would be really handy to have a overview or comparison chart or table that would guide us to an appropriate choice.

    Perhaps they are all equally good for all situations with just one or two exceptions or perhaps there are a lot of factors that would affect your choice of tools here.

    So how to choose?

    Here are some of the topics/questions I've seen across a bunch of forum discussions.

    Different site structure for different languages
    Use of Contexts (complicated to setup?)
    URL format (use of url parameters)
    All pages translated vs just some
    Compatibility with other extras
    Different templates for different languages
    Use of search across languages
    Default languages
    Converting existing sites vs starting new
    Different downloadable assets (e.g. PDFs) across languages

    There are probably others that I haven't run across yet.

    I would really like to avoid a situation where, I've poured a lot of work into a setup then find the one thing that would cause me to restart with another solution.

    Would others find this useful?
      • 36551
      • 416 Posts
      Does anyone have any key criteria with which one would select the proper tool for a given situation?
      • As long as you can maintain it in the long run, go ahead.

        These are some circumstances that might be counted as your consideration:
        Bottomline: focus on your client.

        • Does your client have time (and effort) to translate all the pages?
        • Does your client need different usergroups to access different translations?
        • Does your client need different translated files for download materials?
        • Does your client need different page structures for each language?
        • Do the translations stand as subdomain or subfolder path?
        • ... ask your client
          Rico
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          • 36551
          • 416 Posts
          Goldsky

          Yes, those are additional important client questions, of which I have many. However, my question is once I have answers to those questions, how do I choose which tool to use? Each of them take different approaches with features and/or limitations.

          How do I know which tool will, or will not, satisfy the client requirements?
            • 37105
            • 194 Posts
            If your client has enough time and translation knowledge to translate the resources I can recommend the extras Babel for the translation part and LangRouter for the redirection based on browser language.
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