I am aware of the question What are options are there to implement a multi language site, but the answers there are focused on multi-language support on the backend as well as the frontend.
I am only concerned with offering multi-language viewing of a site’s content, not multi-language content creation.
Could it be as simple as putting the Google Translate Tools code on my site? I see that there are at least a couple of plugins that offer this functionality – anyone have experience with those?
If your just looking for a way for your site to be viewed in other languages I would defiantly recommend using Google Translate Tools. I just add it to the theme:
You can hide the Google Logo and funky colors in your css:
Instead of calling the Google Translate js I just copy the return script and add it to my main js file.
Edit
Google provides embed code to use on your website:
The first line:
<div id="google_translate_element"></div>
can be placed where you want the translate drop down box to be shown:The section between the first set of
<script>
tags are the language and layout options. The last set of<script>
tags call more javascript which Google inserts inline in your html while the dom is loading. To speed up this process and avoid the extra http request and inline script I remove the last call and add the code returned by Google into a “master” js file I use that contains all my custom javascript combined into one file. The code that Google returns is:This is mainly for performance reasons to avoid the extra request and avoids the website having to communicate with Google unless a language is chosen from the drop down box.
The drop down box can be customized using css. For example here is how I display the box on the site I used it on.
please see this question Best practices for localizing WordPress content? maybe you find an solution from this ideas
I’m using qTranslate plugin for a project that i’m developing and i’m really happy with the results..
http://www.qianqin.de/qtranslate/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/qtranslate/
Cheers