How do I design for a foreign language?

[mreine]

How do I design for a foreign language? I've never even considered having to do something like this. I've had a request to create a site that is readable in German. How is this done?

Wouldn't it be great if CSS had a language attribute!

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body { language="German" }

[Webforumz Staff]

You'll need to actually create a full version of the site in that language...

[Pheonix]

Use the normal tags, and instead of

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This is my content, isn't it great?</p>

you would have

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Dieses ist mein Inhalt, ist nicht es groß?</p>

[RaptorRex]

I'll have to do this soon myself.

You need to know what character set your other language uses. I suspect German is still part of the same 1-byte set as English. That makes your life easier. If you are moving to a 2 or 4-byte character set then you have issues. For example my favorite text editor (textpad) doesn't support 2-4byte sets. So I have to find an editor that does, or dual-boot my system and install Linux which I'm partial too anyways.

You may also need support software so you can easily access non-english character sets. I'm currently studying Chinese so I need their character set. Maybe your browser can read this: 我正在学习汉语

If your browser can't read that then you'd need to update your browser to support the extra language you are using.

So to summarize:
You need the right character sets installed
You need the right software that can use that character set to edit your HTML
You may need OS software to type in that character set into your editor.
You need to make sure your browser supports the character set

I suspect Germanic languages are a bit easier to work with than the Asian ones.

I don't know HOW on these issues since I've never done it myself. I just know WHAT I need to do when the time comes.

[Webforumz Staff]

http://www.w3.org/International/articles/language-tags/

http://www.webreference.com/dlab/books/html/39-4.html

[mreine]

Thanks for the help everyone. I finally decided my best bet was to pass on this project. My main reason is I would still have to proof this sucker and make sure it's correct in the other language. I don't have any knowledge of any language other then English and my highschool teacher would probably question that knowledge as well... LOL.

[mmdesign]

I realise it's long as not a question. Quite an old post but...
the solution is very simple charset=UTF-8
I made couple 3-lingual sites: english-russian-lithuanian, worked for Germans too - no problems. It's getting somewhat more difficult if you need to design a version for hebrew or chinese (right to left / up and down). Some practice would be very useful