Planning a Multi-lingual Site Structure

When building a multi-lingual site there are many things to take into consideration such as location of files and documents, number of servers in the server farm, and amount of resources allocated to SharePoint and SQL Server just to name a few.

When you build out the variations you will get sub-sites that represent each language, i.e. fr-ca, en-us, fr-fr. You will also still have the top level site. In this top level site is a Publishing Images folder and a Site Collection Images folder. Either of these photo libraries works well for placing images that will need to be used throughout the site and do not contain any text on them that would need to be translated.

Each language sub-site also contains a Publishing Images folder. These folders work well for images that contain text on them that need to be translated into each language.

Inside each language sub-site we created document libraries to hold Brochures, other word documents, and PDF files.

In the language sites may be other sub-sites, and in each one of these is a Documents folder and an Images folder. If you want to break your content down to that level you can place images in these folders. We used the Documents folder to place XML files that we used for XML web parts in the sub-sites.

In the language sites we also placed Javascript files and Flash movies that were language specific.

For much of your site you can also use ASP.Net Global Resources for text that will automatically use the right translated version in each language site.

With the variation landing page in place, you can allow the user to be directed to the correct language site based on their default browser language settings. If you want you can also put another way to direct users to the different language sites, such as a drop down menu or little flags that are links to the different languages.

Once you plan out the location of your files in a multi-lingual site, it will make it that much easier to maintain the site, especially when you add more languages.