Question

How can I internationalize say a categories table (with a name column) into different languages. How about a products table (consisting of a name and description columns). Which is the best way to internationalize the content of these database tables using Ruby on Rails?

Answer 1

Have you taken a look at:
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/i18n.html

It describes in some detail how to internationalise your application and

“provides an easy-to-use and extensible
framework for translating your
application to a single custom
language other than English or for
providing multi-language support in
your application.”

Some useful links:

• http://rails-i18n.org/
• http://github.com/svenfuchs/rails-i18n
• http://github.com/svenfuchs/rails-i18n/tree/master/rails/locale

Update: 2018

Since answering this question nearly nine years ago, the same author of i18n has created Globalize which builds on the I18n API in Ruby on Rails to add model translations to ActiveRecord models.

Please find details here: https://github.com/globalize/globalize