Making multi-language versions of my website?

[ppayne]

I've got a website that sells a rather unique genre of product from Japan, PC dating-sim games for anime fans (basically games where you have to find how to make girls fall in love with you). Currently our website uses Miva, a compotent shopping cart program that's good, but not great, and certainly never broke any records with Google rankings. Since our games are popular in Italy, Germany, and France, we're planning on making a new version of our website with product pages in English and these three languages. To offset the chance that the Miva pages won't be ranked well, I am planning on doing the site as flat HTML, with buttons linking to the add-to-cart and other cart functions.

My question is, is it really best for us to keep everyhing in one site, in different directories for en, fr, it and so on, or should I consider getting different domains for each site?

Any feedback would be appreciated from the members of this fine forum.

P.S. How does one choose a face icon for their posts?

[coder]

Here's a thread that already discusses what you are asking
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=38147

and for adding a picture to your name here's the section for that
http://www.webproworld.com/viewforum.php?f=37

[bhartzer]

The best way to handle different languages is to use different domain names. For example, the Spanish could be on yourdomain.com.mx if you're targeting the Mexican market.

If you cannot do that, then use subdomains. Never mix languages on the same website.

[linguapro]

Hi! Perhaps we can help you on the language side of things. You can email me or visit the contact page on the website to discuss your requirements, volume of the text to be translated, your preferred currency for quotes etc and budget.
We offer a free translation service to anyone with a small phrase/text to be translated but I imagine you've probably got a fairly large amount of text there. We can discuss options if you like.

[mike]

The best way to handle different languages is to use different domain names. For example, the Spanish could be on yourdomain.com.mx if you're targeting the Mexican market.

If you cannot do that, then use subdomains. Never mix languages on the same website.

This is very important I think. Linking off to your other language versions is a much better way of going about it. I don't like the little 'translate into' buttons, they never seem to work very well for me.

I think you're better off doing fully translated standalone versions of your sites, ideally on their own domain.

[Chris]

here's a quote from an article (http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/searchinsider/wpn-49-20040831SearchEngineOptimizingTowardTheHispanicCom munity.html) i wrote last year on this topic. it should help shed some light:

Instead, Nacho recommends identifying what Spanish money keywords are converting into sales for the Hispanic community related to your business and develop landing pages that will accommodate these visits: