Hi,
this is a very interesting topic. Two of my three ideas were mentioned already:
Let the reader use own tools (browser) or services (Google Translate) to translate.
Pro: Nothing to do for you, just write in your preferred language.
Con: Readers unaware of tools and services will not be able to read your blog. (Solution: You might simply recommend these to your readers.)
Maintain a dedicated blog instance for each desired language.
Check out
flatpress.org /
flatpress.de
Pro: Contents may vary as well, depending on the different interests of your readers. Also: Easy to set up with multiple FlatPress instances.
Con: Double the work: New content, changes to the FlatPress theme, new plugins, FlatPress updates - everything must be done in every instance.
And as for my third idea:
A FlatPress plugin might do the trick.
I once did that for
moziloCMS, the flat-file CMS I wrote many years ago.
The plugin (called "i18n") basically works like this: You write your content in different language tags (but on one page!), and the plugin only displays the content of the language the visitor chose. This could look like this:
Code: Select all
Oh, {i18n|de|hallo Welt!}{i18n|en|hello World!}
German readers would see "Oh, hallo Welt", whereas English ones read "Oh, hello World!".
But the fun is just starting there: You might want to translate not only the entry's content, but also its title. And what about the menus, the sitemap, the search results? These are all generated by the FlatPress engine, and the plugin would have to overwrite this default output. And, what my moziloCMS plugin does, you'd need to write a cookie to store the desired language on your visitor's computer to make sure that the blog is displayed in his desired language not only once, but after every click he does. And so on ...
The moziloCMS i18n plugin is actually being used
on my website. Check the "Mix2Stix" section for example to see how it changes the output - the little flag icons in the header will let you chose the language.
All the best,
Arvid