Which multi-language web architecture works best (multiple views/single view)?

Question

I want to support just 2 languages. There will be no requirement for any additional language. What will be the best approach after considering both ease of use and maintenability:

(a) Each view has a separate page for each language and they will share controllers and model dlls

(b) Both languages pump resources into the same view template

Please don't bother about the url structure right now. I will appreciate real experiences over the theoretical discourses of pros and cons. Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

Mutliple views are more flexiable clearly and if you only have 2 then that is a possibility but its still a pain.

However having just 2 instead of N to worry about means you can probably take both into consideration when creating the views in the first place. Hence instead creating multiple views create a single view that uses resources and works in both languages.

Answer 2

Depends on how different you expect the localized versions to get. If you are pretty confident they will always be almost identical, simply different words in each placeholder, then a single view model would probably be the way to go.

However, what I have found to work when there is a blend between the two (i.e. some views are the same, just translated; others end up being somewhat different) is to build a provider model into each view and sub-view, so when the view engine goes to load a view, there is isolated logic in the provider factory to determine, for that particular view, whether to use the same for both languages or switch.