I have an application written for the UK market that currently only supports English (UK) and a client wants to deploy part of the application out to a non UK site and syncronise the data back to the UK HQ.
I can convert the application labels and messages using resource files and the local culture information but was wondering how you would convert the database bound data.
E.G. Here is the HQ based table
tblFault
ID ; Description
1 ; Not Functional
2 ; Build Fault
3 ; Leak
4 ; Aesthetics
5 ; Testing
If I was to translate the data to the non UK language I could just replace the descriptions but this would cause some problems if the data is unsyncronised?
Should I extend the table with another column for additional language and then alter the selection using the local culture?
tblFault
ID ; Description-EN ; Descrption-US ; Description-DE etc
1 ; Not Functional ; ;
2 ; Build Fault ; ;
3 ; Leak ; ;
4 ; Aesthetics ; ;
5 ; Testing ; ;
What method would you recommend?
Thanks
Phil
Since you have a 1:n relationship between faults and their descriptions, the cleanest solution would be to create a subtable:
tblFault
--------
FaultID ; some other fields
1 ; ...
2 ; ...
3 ; ...
4 ; ...
5 ; ...
tblFault_Description
--------------------
FaultID ; lang ; Description
1 ; en ; Not Functional
1 ; de ; Funktioniert nicht
2 ; en ; ...