I've never had to make a site compatible with other languages and cultures, so it's been (and it is) an adventure for me. For what it's worth, I develop using the .Net framework primarily.
I've got the entire site programmed to accept resource files now (.resx) for dynamically changing the language and culture should someone desire it, and in my limited testing it works. I had a couple questions though:
1) In my design, I basically went through the entire site, and everywhere there was static text, I inserted an asp literal with the text pointing to the resource file. Is this the norm? Likewise for dynamic content, some controls and what not had to be tinkered with to display reports properly and in the right language.
2) For the proper translation, it was my understanding that I would just grab all the resource files that were culture/language neutral, slap a .fr,.es,.de etc on each one (so welcome.aspx.resx -> welcome.aspx.fr.resx for french) - This works, but my question is, how do I package these appropriately to have them translated? I'm using VS2008, I don't expect the translator to look at raw XML and translate it. Free software that can read and edit theses easily?
3) Any tips for developing in the future? This was a harder case scenario for me since the site was originally in classic asp, and I had to retrofit and reprogram many things to leverage the resources files and framework. This is my first crack at it.
FWIW I used a master page for each language that creates a Header with the language sensitive links for each possible choice. For switching the languages, I wrote a class called BasePage that all my pages except the master pages inherit. On page.init of BasePage, I set the Culture and UICulture to the appropriate language /region and I also declaratively set the masterpage to use. This seems to work well. I made a small dropdown list that my personal login only can use to change the language on the fly, and it seems to work as well. Like I said, first crack at it - anything I did stupid / made harder on myself?
thanks.