Question

I want to create a site in PHP with cakephp that users can insert product manually.
The problem is for the multilanguage because I can have into my site users from all over the world and the product ‘apple’ in italian for example is ‘mela’.
Consider that I can have many many data!
Then i have some solution for the database:

1. • Create a table products with an id
   • Create a table product_aliases where I have an id the id of product language and the text(ex. apple)
     In this mode users can enter into ‘apple’, translate ad I insert a new line into product_aliases with same id product different language and different text but same product

2. Define 5 language and create a table with more fields (title_en, title_it, title_es…) the translation is in the same record
   Only one table but restricted language

3. • Create a table products with an id
   • Create a table for every language that i want for example: prducts_en, products_it where I can store my data with same foreign key to the product but divide from language to make fast query.

Other solution are accepted!!
I never work with large multilanguage database help me and tell me what is the best solution for my database

Answer 1

The first one is the correct solution in general.

It’s used in many enterprise applications: a table with an id field for identification of the not multilanguage information (example: unit price for a product) and a table with a row for every combination product/language.

The second one is against every db normalization rule.

The third one is a different derivation of the second one, and if you use an index on the language column in the translated labels table you should not have a great disadvantage in terms of performance.

If you need I will explain better!