Before we proceed with how to build a multi-language website (MLW), let’s understand more what is a multi-language website and why you need it.

By definition, a multilingual website is a website that provides content in more than one language, for example, English, French and German. In some cases only a few sections of the website need to be available in more than a language. For an example of some MLW review the following:
- www.europa.eu (visit)
- www.epaper.com.my (visit)
There are many reasons to develop a multilingual website (MLW), especially for corporate business.
- Desire to get into new markets. This makes sense for companies that are not internationally established yet but plan to break into new markets.
- The need to provide products and services information to international clients. In this case the company is already a player in the international market and hence needs to keep a communication channel with customers from different nationalities.
- The need to provide informative content in many different languages. Ie.: media companies
- Many countries have more than one official language, therefore providing content and information in the different languages is a need.
Besides that, we can cite governmental institutions, public services, NGOs, tourism related companies, language schools, and many other business activities that can take advantage of a MLW. In some cases there are even legal obligations.
However, this is just a corporate view. With the popularization of internet, small companies and even bloggers can take advantage of a multilingual website. Providing content in different languages may multiply significantly the site or blog traffic and potentially increase their results.
For Asian countries users, we recommend you to ePaper as their interface are more suit to your locality.
Original post.