How to internationalize content on ruby on rails?

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

Answer 2

On RailsCasts there is a nice article about, using a gem called Globalize3. That just let you set which Models will be translated and manage a translate tables for each model, and works just like i18n is to static pages...

Take a look

http://railscasts.com/episodes/338-globalize3?view=asciicast