Re: [phpesp-general] Multilingual support in surveys

[James E. F. <jf...@ac...>]

On Tue, 15 Jan 2002, Danie Roux wrote:

> I can translate the interface, which is cool and 50%
> done. I want to be able to translate the surveys as
> well. Let me explain:
>
> Here in South Africa we have 11 official languages. Yes
> eleven. The university is a Afrikaans/English
> university. I need then to let the students select the
> language and do the survey. But the results has to be
> stored the same way regardless of what language the
> survey was taken in.
>
> Where do I start?

Wow. Surprisingly enough this issue has come up before.
No definitive solution was reached.

The way the surveys are stored in the database does not
make multiple languages of the same survey to be stored.
One kludge that will work without modification is as
follows:
 1) *Fully* create a survey in one language.
 2) Copy the survey for each additional language.
 3) Change the text *only* (no order changes, option
    changes etc)
 4) Enable all surveys and direct users to the appropriate
    one (based on language).
 5) Use the "Merge Survey Results" (hidden) feature.
    [ manage.php?where=merge ]
The Merge feature assumes that the surveys are *identical*
in layout, so Q1 on S1 corresponds exactly to Q1 on S2 etc.

The above solution was an interim solution. The best real
solution I could come up with was to move the survey
backend format to XML (rather than SQL tables). By using
XML many problems are solved:
 o Much more flexible format (e.g. text in misc places)
 o Easy to use different front ends other than HTML (via
   XSL)
 o Customizable report/results pages (also XML)
But there are still problems. I have not found a definitive
way on how one should include multiple languages in one XML
file. There are "lang" attributes that can be used ... And
of course you could use more than one XML file (one per
language).

I have done work on using XML with phpESP, but am stalled
on releasing it because of this problem. I don't want to do
it one way then having to do it over another way. I would
greatly appreciate any feedback from anyone with experience
with multi-lingual apps.

-James