Best practice javascript and multilanguage

Question

what is the best practice for multilanguage website using DOM Manipulating with javascript? I build some dynamic parts of the website using javascript. My first thought was

Answer 1

You should look into what has been done in classic JS components - take things like Dojo, Ext, FCKEditor, TinyMCE, etc. You'll find lots of good ideas.

Usually it ends up being some kind of attributes you set on tags, and then you replace the content of the tag with the translation found in your translation file, based on the value of the attribute.

One thing to keep in mind, is the evolution of the language set (when your code evolves, will you need to retranslate the whole thing or not). We keep the translations in PO Files (Gnu Gettext), and we have a script that transforms the PO File into ready to use JS Files.

In addition:

• Always use UTF-8 - this sounds silly, but if you are not in utf-8 from start (HTML head + JS encoding), you'll be bust quickly.
• Use the english string as a key to your translations - this way you won't end up with things like: lang.Greeting = 'Hello world' - but lang['Hello world'] = 'Hello world';