I am the project manager on a website that needs to be converted into multiple languages. I am trying to figure out what the best option to go with is. I don't have a problem paying for something, but I just want to make sure it will work properly.
The options that I have thought of was to either (somehow) integrate google translate that when the user clicks on the language they want to read the page in, it updates the language for google to translate into. I did work with Google translate a little bit, but I found it to be little clumsy. Maybe I am not using it properly.
Another alternative I had, definitely not the best idea, but a backup if need be is to have the content put in a database and pulling the content dependent on the user's language. The only problem I have is that changing one word on the English version would have to change on every other language.
I am open to any other idea. I can clarify the project more, if need be.
As someone who speaks several languages, I can assure you that Google Translate often misses the mark. In many cases their translations are embarrassing, especially when you try to translate individual words or phrases without a sufficient context. Some language pairs are better than others, but overall this is not an option at this point.
Compiled languages have an advantage of static i18n, when a different version of a code is compiled for each UI language.
Database-driven dynamic i18n is a bad option, and almost all programming frameworks try to avoid it. I would recommend, therefore, that you look for an i18n solution that works with properties (text) files to lookup translated strings. In PHP this is gettext or intl.
Note also that i18n involves not only translation of text, but it also requires appropriate localization of dates, numbers, currencies, etc.
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