How to support Multi-Languages approach in DataBase Schema?

Question

I want my database to support multi Languages for all text values in its tables.

So what is the best approach to do that?.

Edit1

Answer 1

I've just implemented something which is working very well.

Like many others, I've not had a clean slate to start with, and all tables were geared up to store English text.

I was not particularly happy to double the number of tables, or columns to achieve a multilingual database.

I decided to utilise XML as a way to store all translations, into a single field:

  good day
  bonjour

So for example, I started with a table which only holds English:

ProductId INT
ProductName varchar(200)
ProductDescription varchar(1000)

I then created the multilingual fields:

ProductId INT
ProductNameTranslation xml
ProductDescriptionTranslation xml

If you want to be able to get a read-only value for the original fields, you can simply add a persisted computed columns:

ProductId INT
ProductNameTranslation xml
ProductDescriptionTranslation xml
ProductNameDefaultLang = dbo.GetDefaultLanguage(ProductNameTranslation)
ProductDescriptionDefaultLang = dbo.GetDefaultLanguage(ProductDescriptionTranslation)

In the business/data layer, the XML field is converted in to a dictionary type business class, with key being a language enumeration:

ProductName {
  get {return this.ProductNameTranslation[selectedLanguage];}
  set {...}
}

This approach allowed me to avoid having to completely re-carve up the database. It also means less interaction with the database, one row to be saved instead of one main row, and 3 translation rows.

Also it avoids the issue of having to handle cases where the main row has no translation rows

Should be noted that the XML had a schema and XML indexes to boost performance.

This approach is very useful where you want to do the language conversion incrementally i.e. one field at a time.