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PHP Beginners: How to Add Multi-language Support to a Website

Posted on July 23, 2009, Filled under PHP,  Bookmark it

Are you interested in having a multilingual website? This is a tutorial that shows you how you can do that in PHP.

php-multi-language-site

The first thing we need to do is to create a couple of files that will contain the text for each of the languages that will be supported by the website. For demo purpose I have chosen English, Spanish and German. Make a directory named “directory”. In this directory create 3 files: lang.de.php, lang.en.php, and lang.es.php. In our main file (index.php) we will include a file (common.php) containing a piece of code that gets the requested language. Here’s the content of those 3 language files:

lang.en.php

<?php
/*
------------------
Language: English
------------------
*/

define('LANG_PAGE_TITLE', 'My website page title');
define('LANG_HEADER_TITLE', 'My website header title');
define('LANG_SITE_NAME', 'My Website');
define('LANG_SLOGAN', 'My slogan here');
define('LANG_HEADING', 'Heading');

// Menu

define('LANG_MENU_HOME', 'Home');
define('LANG_MENU_ABOUT_US', 'About Us');
define('LANG_MENU_OUR_PRODUCTS', 'Our products');
define('LANG_MENU_CONTACT_US', 'Contact Us');
define('LANG_MENU_ADVERTISE', 'Advertise');
define('LANG_MENU_SITE_MAP', 'Site Map');
?>

lang.es.php

<?php
/*
------------------
Language: Spanish
------------------
*/

define('LANG_PAGE_TITLE', 'Título de la página de mi sitio web');
define('LANG_HEADER_TITLE', 'Mi sitio web de la cabecera título');
define('LANG_SITENAME', 'Mi Sitio Web');
define('LANG_SLOGAN', '	Mi lema aquí');
define('LANG_HEADING', 'Título');

// Menu

define('LANG_MENU_HOME', 'Inicio');
define('LANG_MENU_ABOUT_US', 'Sobre Nosotros');
define('LANG_MENU_OUR_PRODUCTS', 'Nuestros productos');
define('LANG_MENU_CONTACT_US', 'Contáctenos');
define('LANG_MENU_ADVERTISE', 'Publicidad');
define('LANG_MENU_SITE_MAP', 'Mapa del Sitio');
?>

lang.de.php

<?php
/*
-----------------
Language: German
-----------------
*/

define('LANG_PAGE_TITLE', 'Meine Webseite Titel');
define('LANG_HEADER_TITLE', 'Meine Website-Header Titel');
define('LANG_SITE_NAME', 'Meine Website');
define('LANG_SLOGAN', 'Mein Slogan hier');
define('LANG_HEADING', 'Position');

// Menu

define('LANG_MENU_HOME', 'Heim');
define('LANG_MENU_ABOUT_US', 'Ãœber uns');
define('LANG_MENU_OUR_PRODUCTS', 'Unsere Produkte');
define('LANG_MENU_CONTACT_US', 'Kontaktieren Sie uns');
define('LANG_MENU_ADVERTISE', 'Werben');
define('LANG_MENU_SITE_MAP', 'Site Karte');
?>

As you can notice, some constants are created using the define() function. In every file the defined constants have the same name, bu the values is different. We will output the values of the constants inside the index.php file. Therefore we will see different text every time we will call other language file.

Determine the right language

Let’s analyze the common.php file:

<?php
session_start();
header('Cache-control: private'); // IE 6 FIX

if(isSet($_GET['lang']))
{
$lang = $_GET['lang'];

// register the session and set the cookie
$_SESSION['lang'] = $lang;

setcookie('lang', $lang, time() + (3600 * 24 * 30));
}
else if(isSet($_SESSION['lang']))
{
$lang = $_SESSION['lang'];
}
else if(isSet($_COOKIE['lang']))
{
$lang = $_COOKIE['lang'];
}
else
{
$lang = 'en';
}

switch ($lang) {
  case 'en':
  $lang_file = 'lang.en.php';
  break;

  case 'de':
  $lang_file = 'lang.de.php';
  break;

  case 'es':
  $lang_file = 'lang.es.php';
  break;

  default:
  $lang_file = 'lang.en.php';

}

include_once 'languages/'.$lang_file;
?>

After we determine the value of $lang, we use switch() to compare its value with some different values, and execute a different piece of code depending on which value it equals to. After the value of the $lang_file is determined, the script will include the necessary language file. As you can see I have used sessions to register the value of $lang. This way users can navigate through the whole site and see the content in the chosen language (lang=[language here] does not need to be passed in every URL). Additionally, I have used cookies to store the selected language in users computer for 30 days. When the visitor will come back he will see the site in the language that he previously selected.

How if the website’s language requested?

In this demo I have chosen to use some image flags, each image having a link to index.php?lang=[LANG HERE]. So, to see the site in german we will use the German image flag which links to index.php?lang=de.

Lastly, the constants values should be outputted in the page. Examples:

for document title

<title><?php echo LANG_PAGE_TITLE; ?></title>

for header menu

 <ul>
      <li><a href="/"><?php echo LANG_MENU_HOME; ?></a></li>
      <li><a href="about_us"><?php echo LANG_MENU_ABOUT_US; ?></a></li>
	  <li><a href="our_products"><?php echo LANG_MENU_OUR_PRODUCTS; ?></a></li>
      <li><a href="contact_us"><?php echo LANG_MENU_CONTACT_US; ?></a></li>
      <li><a href="advertise"><?php echo LANG_MENU_ADVERTISE; ?></a></li>
      <li><a href="sitemap"><?php echo LANG_MENU_SITE_MAP; ?></a></li>
    </ul>

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PHP Beginners: How to Add Multi-language Support to a Website

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36 Replies to "PHP Beginners: How to Add Multi-language Support to a Website"

  1. Frank
    July 25, 2009 at 5:44 PM
    Reply

    This may works out for a couple of pages, but not for much, ( except the menu and static stuff ) as the page title is vital for SEO, and every page having the same title will really be a problem.

    Furthermore you’d need to write all your content in 3 languages and associate that with the pages that should display that content later on. Better is to have a nice – maybe written by your own – CMS that really does nothing else than “spit” out requested content in the requested language on the appropriate page.

    We use a small CMS for our news section, which supports 3 languages. Using such a thing together with your approach then makes sense. It displays contents on our different language websites accordingly.

  2. Ulle
    August 4, 2009 at 1:30 AM
    Reply

    I wonder could that be changed so when changing the language, the hrefs of the header change aswell as the title of the link? that way i could simply just add

    “href=”index.php?page=etusivu&lang=th”

    and with include, bring in different texts to the body area, according to the language:

    include ($lang.”/etusivu.html”);

    That way, I dont need to define different words for different languages, since all words will be in separate .php or .html file.

    1. Gabriel
      August 4, 2009 at 3:55 AM
      Reply

      It’s good to have a certain order of the files and keep each language words in separate files. I have seen many professional applications built this way and I really recommend this practice. I don’t like the idea of changing the links inside the page. I believe it’s better to use specific links or (flag) images to set the desired language.

      1. Ulle
        August 4, 2009 at 9:19 PM
        Reply

        @Gabriel,

        I aggree on the point: of using specific links or imgs to set the language, but the href that i want to change is the menu’s links “home, links, contact, etc” :) could that be possible with your script? Im a newbie sorta with php.

        Thanks :)

  3. Twitted by planetphp
    August 11, 2009 at 10:55 AM

    [...] This post was Twitted by planetphp [...]

  4. Arnoud ten Hoedt
    August 11, 2009 at 10:57 AM
    Reply

    Hi,

    Using constants is just the simplest way of localizing your content. Personally I got realy fond of the way WordPress has incorporated localisation. Somewhat simplified but everywhere you want to use a localized string you just wrap it in __() or _e():
    to echo a localized string. The function _e($str) knows if a translated version of the string is present in your translation set. If so the translation is outputted, otherwise the unaltered text. This makes sure you never get ugly constant warnings in your interface.
    Using any of the dozens of ways you can easily hook your __() and _e() implementation to your prefered dictionairy method of choice. Be it ini files, or xml files, or when you are up to it going with gettext (.po/.me and .pot files, with POEdit).
    This post is okee for just a simple site, but when you get into larger sites, you need to get a more sound and less error prone approach.

    My 2cts

    Arnoud

  5. simi.ro
    September 17, 2009 at 11:27 AM
    Reply

    Thanks :) man.
    .-= simi.ro’s last blog ..U Tv =-.

  6. sunil verma
    November 23, 2009 at 8:48 PM
    Reply

    Hi buddy this is very simple way to convert language……..

  7. ket
    December 9, 2009 at 4:07 AM
    Reply

    Great tutorial. It’s what the feature I am looking for for my dating website.

    Can you tell us a bit further how do replace the flag icon with the dropdown box option.

  8. Peter
    December 23, 2009 at 12:16 AM
    Reply

    Hi

    Is it actually possible instead of redirecting each language link to the index

    Instead of <a href="?lang=en" rel="nofollow">

    use

    lt;a href="<?php $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']?>" rel="nofollow">?lang=nl">

    1. Bill Gates
      December 26, 2009 at 10:37 AM
      Reply

      Hi Peter i think a better explaination would be better coz the second link is sensless

  9. Goulart
    February 1, 2010 at 1:22 PM
    Reply

    How to modify for use with mysql database?

  10. e11world
    February 2, 2010 at 12:31 PM
    Reply

    I do like this but I prefer to do this a different way and I think it keeps files more organized but I’m not sure how to do it. Perhaps someone can tell me.

    I want to have each language files in their own folder (en/ and fr/) for english and french for example. I want to be able to click on the image/text and have the page I’m currently on change to the same page but in a different language. So essentially, we are just changing the folder name from en to fr.
    Can anyone please tell me how to do this? A sample site here but it’s in ASP code (http://www.contacservices.com/)
    Thank you in advance.

    1. oliver
      July 29, 2010 at 12:17 AM
      Reply

      hey like your site loos great – looking to do something similar with ours but possibly using sessions and cookies so you would not have to duplicate pages i.e. index_en && index_fr etc..

  11. Marzio
    February 7, 2010 at 9:19 PM
    Reply

    Very usefull tutorial!
    I have a doubt. How can I add to this code a php function to identify the default browser language?

  12. satheesh
    February 23, 2010 at 10:38 PM
    Reply

    Can anyone tell me how to use multilanguage for a dynamic content from database

  13. ITor126
    February 24, 2010 at 3:48 PM
    Reply

    thank for your very good posting

  14. brixter
    March 3, 2010 at 7:39 PM
    Reply

    Hi @ e11world

    That’s fairly easy. Create a new directory/folder and named it to english for english and spanish for spanish and german for german and so on.

    After that, create lang.en.php, lang.es.php and lang.de.php. Rename these files like lang.en.php into english.php and so on and put them in their respective directories.

    Next step, you’ll have to modify the common.php.

    Look for line 29 $lang_file = ‘lang.en.php’; and replace with this code below:

    $lang_file = ‘english’; //let’s remove the .php extension instead^^

    Do this for the other languages you like.

    Now, go into line 45 and change this code: include_once ‘languages/’.$lang_file;

    into this code below:

    include_once ‘languages/’.$lang_file.’/’.$lang_file.’.php’;

    You now have languages in each directories. It’s more clean and cumpty this way specially when you suddenly decided to separate each language section in each files, you’re translator won’t have a hard way.
    To change language, use the below code.

    @ket

    To replace it with drop down menu, you’ll have to use this example code below:

    function jump(menu){
    var loc = menu[menu.selectedIndex].value.split(“|”);
    if(loc.length == 2)
    window.open(loc[1], loc[0]);
    }

    <option value="_top|?&lang=en” >English
    <option value="_top|?&lang=de” >German
    <option value="_top|?&lang=es” >Spanish

    It will repeat the requested language over and over until you click other links. I know, the javascript is old but i used it to my site. It’s good and it’s not jquery.

    Hi @ Peter

    It’s quite easy, omit the index.php so instead of index.php?lang=en it would be better this way ?&lang=es and you won’t be redirected in the index.php for changing language! It will repeat the requested language over and over again but atleast it wort. Hope other users will find a better way and please mail me @ brixter.deleon[@]paper-soup.com.

    Hi @ Marzio

    It’s already in there. Take a good close look at line 40. If the script can’t find the language requested by the user, it will automatically call on the default which is the english. So when a user submitted lang?=justajoke, the script will automatically call in the default which is the english language.

    Anyways, nice tutorial kudos to the author.

    1. e11world
      May 1, 2010 at 12:59 PM
      Reply

      @Brixter
      Thanks for the help. I actually found many sites offering the same way you suggested here but it’s not what I want and I found another way to do this exactly how I want. Thanks!

  15. Morris
    March 4, 2010 at 10:22 PM
    Reply

    I wanted to know if it is possible to use this define method but instead of having text, direct it to an image. If i have a menu that is constructed of images, how would I come about doing that?

    Thanks.

  16. Brixter
    March 14, 2010 at 3:19 PM
    Reply

    Ah what you mean is that instead of text links you used image links like those buttons?

    Here is the answer, you can define it like this:

    Follow above instructions, then create a image link like below:

    define(‘LANG_HEADING’, ”);

    Hope that clears out your question,

  17. Brixter
    March 14, 2010 at 3:20 PM
    Reply

    define(‘LANG_HEADING’, ‘[img src="position.jpg" /]‘);

    change [ to < oky?

  18. Jorgen
    March 23, 2010 at 8:09 AM
    Reply

    Great article on adding multiple language support to php. If you don’t like having multiple language files, you can also get the same effect by having a single file that contains all translations in a single array. You can see a tutorial about this approach here:
    http://tips4php.net/2010/03/support-multiple-languages-in-php/

    1. Brixter
      March 26, 2010 at 3:46 AM
      Reply

      @ laur: I guess your missing proper fonts. Or you can use CHECK LINK for profer displaying special characters in html.

  19. laur
    March 24, 2010 at 1:11 AM
    Reply

    Hi

    Tell me how can i make to appear German character.
    Ex: In demo website on menu “About us”, if i change on German language it appear ? instead the special character. what can i do?

  20. Frank
    April 15, 2010 at 1:36 AM
    Reply

    Hi there,

    This is a great tutorial, but I have one question. Is it possible to fallback to the English text if the translated text for the chosen language is not available?

    Thanks!

  21. Arthur
    April 15, 2010 at 12:26 PM
    Reply

    Great script! Would really like to get this to work.
    Standalone it works.
    http://www.mashamoto-imports.com/languages.php

    But when I try to work it into my site I’m getting header errors.

    Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: Cannot send session cache limiter – headers already sent (output started at /opt/www/mashamotoltd2/web/www.mashamoto-imports.com/index.php:1) in /opt/www/mashamotoltd2/web/www.mashamoto-imports.com/common2.php on line 2

    Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /opt/www/mashamotoltd2/web/www.mashamoto-imports.com/index.php:1) in /opt/www/mashamotoltd2/web/www.mashamoto-imports.com/common2.php on line 3

    Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /opt/www/mashamotoltd2/web/www.mashamoto-imports.com/index.php:1) in /opt/www/mashamotoltd2/web/www.mashamoto-imports.com/common2.php on line 12

    These 3 lines give me the “headers already sent” error

    session_start();

    header(‘Cache-control: private’); // IE 6 FIX

    setcookie(“lang”, $lang, time() + (3600 * 24));

    Could anyone please tell me how to solve this?

    1. Henri Bogaarts
      June 6, 2010 at 10:15 PM
      Reply

      Arthur try this; cut “session_start();” from common2.php and paste it into index.php

  22. Arthur
    April 15, 2010 at 1:15 PM
    Reply

    BTW, I just noticed that when I copy & paste the exact same code from index.php in a new file called index2.php it works flawless :s ?

    http://www.mashamoto-imports.com/index2.php

    What could be causing this? The code is exactly the same?

    1. Tempest
      May 12, 2010 at 6:32 PM
      Reply

      Arthur, are you saving your web page as a UTF-8 or ANSI? UTF-8 will create that issue too. Try saving your page again but with a ANSI encoding.

  23. soft
    April 26, 2010 at 8:22 AM
    Reply

    How can I use Chinese or Japanese characters?

  24. Arthur
    May 12, 2010 at 10:48 PM
    Reply

    Thanks matey! I got it working :)

  25. Brixter
    May 16, 2010 at 4:31 AM
    Reply

    I haven’t saw this error (as posted by Author) in my local apache server but it displays in the internet.

    Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /opt/www/mashamotoltd2/web/www.mashamoto-imports.com/index.php:1) in /opt/www/mashamotoltd2/web/www.mashamoto-imports.com/common2.php on line 12

    I guess saving the file as ANSI works. thanks @ tempest.

  26. Serpant
    June 15, 2010 at 3:44 PM
    Reply

    Hello is this script SEO friendly ?
    If it is then how i can make a sitemap icluding the 3 different languages ?

  27. Giorgos
    June 27, 2010 at 4:47 AM
    Reply

    Is there any way to make this SEO friendly?

  28. Giorgos
    June 30, 2010 at 10:42 PM
    Reply

    There’s no one to answer…..

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