Deploying and managing a multilingual Web site requires some flexibility. You must be able to adapt to local needs and respect cultural differences, while at the same time maintaining the integrity of the overall, worldwide site, and establishing a common product branding across languages. By offering a good mix of localization and globalization features, Domino and Domino Global WorkBench allow Web site managers to truly customize their sites in each language version, while maintaining certain global standards.
The Domino Global WorkBench synchronization process lets you define and track different types of documents:
- A Global document is a document that will be displayed to all users in the language in which it was originally created. It can be created in any database in any language. When the Domino Global WorkBench Synchronizer runs, it simply copies newly created or updated Global documents to the other language databases (for sites composed of multiple unilingual databases). In a multilingual database there is only one copy of each Global document.. In this case, the $Language field of the Global document is set to include all the languages supported by the database.
- A Local document is specific to one language or language database.
- A Translatable document is one that can be created in any supported language in the Web site and that needs to be made available in all other language versions of the site. Translatable documents are the most interesting documents from a creation, update, and synchronization point of view. A Translatable document needs to be translated into one or more languages. First, it is created in any language in its respective database -- a German document is created in the German database. When the Synchronizer runs, it copies the newly created Translatable document in its original language (German in this case), to the other language versions of the application, and gives this document the state 'Untranslated.' If the Synchronizer finds an existing Translatable document that has changed, it gives the versions in the other languages the state 'Modified', but otherwise does not change them.
These states serve as flags to the site translators. For multilingual databases, the Synchronizer creates new copies of Translatable documents within the same database; for unilingual databases, it creates new Translatable documents in the other language databases. Translatable documents all have a $Language field, which contains the appropriate language identifier, which specifies the language that should be used in that document.
One of the challenges of building and maintaining documents across languages is that not all documents may be required in all languages, whether translated or not, and some documents may be specific to one language or one language database. |
