RapidWeaver FAQ - Multilingual websites
I would like to have a website in multiple languages. How can I do that? And how can I have the buttons displaying in the right language?
CHAPTER 1: A note about internet translating tools
CHAPTER 2: What’s the solution?
2.1 Easiest solution
2.2 More complicated solution
CHAPTER 3: No matter what you do...
CHAPTER 1: A note about internet translating tools
Please don’t use internet translating tools to translate the whole content of a website. They aren’t accurate! I myself speak italian, german, english and french (in order from best to less good). Browsing through the internet I sometimes read awfully translated stuff which makes no sense at all and comes straight from translation tools. So please translate it yourself or ask someone to translate it for you.
Now, sadly, it isn’t possible to switch languages while working on a project in RapidWeaver. Which means that you can’t have one part of a website showing english buttons and the other part of the website showing german buttons or whatever.
CHAPTER 2: What’s the solution?
There are two solutions: the easiest solution (the one I use) and the more complicated solution.
2.1 Easiest solution
The easiest solution would be having RapidWeaver in english. Almost everyone has basic knowledge of english and will understand the few RapidWeaver navigation buttons you find in Blogs or Photo pages.
My other website iWebFAQ.org is made of three separate sites. “site” which is the one in english then I have the site called “ita” which is the italian version and “de” the german version. Resulting in:
iwebfaq.org/site/
iwebfaq.org/ita/
iwebfaq.org/de/
When I add a new FAQ I first build it in english then copy it and paste it into the other language site and translate it.
The sites are linked to each other as you can see at the top of the pages: “The same page in english”, “La stessa pagina in italiano” and “Die gleiche Seite auf Deutsch”. So people can choose on each page what language they want.
Some people however want to have the navigation buttons in another language as well. So for those people here is the...
2.2 More complicated solution
You could have multiple websites and edit them as completely independent from one another.
Now there are two ways to have the buttons showing up in different languages.
1. You create different user accounts on the computer and set every account having another language.
To create the new account on your computer go to System Preferences=>Accounts=> + and it will turn out to be in the default language. Then go to System Preferences=>International=>There you should have a Language Tab with a list of some languages. All you need to do is drag the language you want to be on the top. If it doesn't display in the list (it should however) click on Edit List... And there you should find it and add it to the list.
2. Using the same user account you can switch the language of RapidWeaver by going to your application folder=>select RapidWeaver=>Hit Command(Apple)+i=>In languages select only the language you want to edit a site with and deselect the others.
Chapter 3: No matter what you do...
No matter what you do: every language should have it’s site (File => New Project) just like mine does (“site”, “ita” and “de”)...
You then would have an index page from which users choose in which language they want to visit your site (on my site it’s the Welcome page) and best would also be to have links on each page (like the ones with the flags at the top of the pages of the iwebfaq.org website).
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