Best Practices To Localize Your Data Model for a Multi-language Website

In my last blog i spoke about X# IN COSMOS today I would like to bring your focus Best Practices to design Data Model For Multilingual website.
Now a days to discover your business in the global market, companies/ organisations including software developers are keen to expand to new markets by localizing their products in various regions.

In this article,a couple of approaches will be explained to design the data model for localisation to be able to manage your content in different languages.

What is Localization?

In a general term, Localization means spreading the product across various markets. Discovering the market share of product sales becomes a very important factor.

If the localization process is done in the right manner, then your target audience will realize that the product has been designed for them suiting their current lifestyle depending on various needs & languages of the customer.

According to various surveys it has been proved that if English is not the first language in certain places, then the local languages are their first choice for a software product.

According to a survey by MediaPost.com and Internet World Stats.

1. 82% of European consumers are less likely to buy online if the site is not in their native tongue (Eurobarometer survey).
2. 72.4% of global consumers are more likely to buy a product if the information is available in their own language (Common Sense Advisory).
3. The English language currently only accounts for 31% of all online use, and more than half of all searches are in languages other than English.
4. Today, 42% of all Internet users are in Asia, while almost one-quarter are in Europe and just over 10% are in Latin America.
5. Chinese now officially the second-most-prominent-language on the Web. Arabic has increased by a whopping 2500%, while English has only risen by 204%.

Content Translation as Localization:

To begin with localization, content translation is the most important point.

The second most important point is to design an efficient and robust database model to store translated content in various languages.

Best practice to design data model:

To design a data model for a multiple language travel portal, you will need to store text fields like PackageTitle and PackageDescription in various languages.

You will also need to store text fields in subsequent/ other tables, such as the CustomerMaster table in all these languages.

To design data model with content translation in mind, here are some examples with pros and cons:

Approaches cited below can be expanded to other tables in the data model; approach chosen by you will depend entirely on your own requisites.

Approach 1:

This is one of the simplest approach when you talk about development. You can implement this by adding a language column for each field.

 

Pros:
1. Implementation process is very easy.
2. The complexity for writing an SQL query to retrieve the underlying data in any language is zero.

Cons:
1. There is no scalability: every time a new language is added, you will have to add dozens of columns across the tables.
2. It is time-consuming, when many fields require multiple languages.
3. Developers end up writing the query shown below to manage all existing languages. So, all SQLs in your application must change when a new language is introduced. (Note: @in_language indicates the present language of the app; this guideline comes from the front end of the app, while the records are being retrieved in the backend.)

Approach #2 – Creating Entity Layers for Translated Fields and Non-Translated Fields

In this solution, entity tables containing one or more translated fields will be split into two layers: one for translated fields, and the other for non-translated fields. This way, we create separate layers for each.

Pros:
1. If only non-translated fileds are concerned, then there is no need for translation tables. Hence, non-translated fields perform better.
2. A comparatively lesser number of joins are necessary to be able to retrieve translated texts.
3. Writing OEM is very simple & easy.
4. The SQLs used to retrieve translated text are quite simple.
5. This method for including multiple languages across entities has been tried & tested.
6. To validate the point, here is a sample query that will help to retrieve translated text:

9series, as an organization has developed multi language portals in ASP.Net(MVC Core) with the help of our IATA Certified developers for our esteemed client. You can also hire mvc.net developers for your specific projects and we will give you our best one.

Conclusion:
Localisation is paramount when a global brand infiltrates into local market. When planning to localise an application, look at the future aspects of it. Localisation is not only about technically perfect performance but it also means mastering the local cultures, behaviours, and even ways of thinking and living.

Stay tuned for our next article!