Professional web sites do not rely on Google Translator or other automated tools. Although we can have an idea of the translated subject, not always the translation is 100% accurate and could cause problems for the site owner. Nothing wrong with the client submitting the page to the translation tool, since it is his option and decision to do that, but if you wish to construct a professional multi-lingual web site, I recommend that you spend the time and resources translating all the content by using a human translator.

I have a simple and fast method of building a multi-lingual web site. First you should start by creating a table with all the languages you will use on the site. Think of that as a spreadsheet where each line will be a field or text to be displayed on your pages, and each column will be the selected language. Translate all your content and feed that table. Then, on your Application.cfm or Application.cfc file, load the entire table to the application scope. In the company I work, we load it to the server scope, since we have several multi-lingual web sites, and that saves memory in our case, since we are not loading the same table for each site.
Once the application (or server, in my case) started, you will have the entire dictionary available for all pages. For each page you then call a function to load only the labels or content you need for that page into a structure (I call it: lang), and then you output it on your page as for example: #lang.save# which would display the word “save” in English or “sauvegarder” in French.
You may download my sample application here, which includes the component, spreadsheet, table script, application.cfm and sample code.

At the start of the application, I always read the entire table into the application scope to a query named: application.dictionary. I also set some key structures to work on the site.
Here is the code for your Application.cfm or Application.cfc:
{code type=coldfusion}<cfscript>
application.mainDSN = “myDatabase” ;
application.site = structNew();
application.site.defaultLanguage = “EN”;
application.site.languages = “EN,FR,DE,ES,PT”; // list of languages allowed for this site
application.oLang = createObject(“component”, “dictionary”); //create the object
thisPage = structNew(); //create structure for page verbs and other stuff
</cfscript>
<!— if the dictionary is not already loaded into application scope, then load it —>
<cfif not structKeyExists(application, “dictionary”)>
<cflock scope=”Application” type=”exclusive” timeout=”10″>
<cfset application.dictionary = oLang.init() />
</cflock>
</cfif><{/code}

This piece of code below you should put at the beginning of each page, which sets the content you want to translate for such page:
{code type=coldfusion}<cfprocessingdirective pageencoding=”utf-8″ suppresswhitespace=”true”>
<cfparam name=”url.lang” default=”#application.site.defaultLanguage#” />
<cfparam name=”client.lang” default=”#application.site.defaultLanguage#” />
<!— Here goes the field list to retrieve from the dictionary table —>
<cfset thisPage.wordList = “name,address,city,state,zipCode,selectLang,save,requestMoreInfo” />
<cfset lang = application.oLang.setLanguage(url.Lang, thisPage.wordList) />{/code}
Here is the component I wrote to set the selected language:
{code type=coldfusion}<cfcomponent>
<cffunction name=”init” access=”remote” output=”false” returntype=”Query”>
<cfquery name=”get” datasource=”#application.mainDSN#”>
select fieldName, #application.site.languages#
</cfloop>
from dictionary
</cfquery>
<cfreturn get />
</cffunction>
<cffunction name=”setLanguage” access=”remote” output=”false” returntype=”Struct”>
<cfargument name=”selectedLanguage” type=”string” required=”false” default=”#application.selectedLanguage#” />
<cfargument name=”wordList” type=”string” required=”false” default=”” />
<cfset arguments.wordlist = listQualify(arguments.wordList,”‘”,”,”) />
<cfif not listFindNoCase(application.site.languages, arguments.selectedLanguage)>
<cfset arguments.selectedLanguage = application.site.defaultLanguage />
</cfif>
<cfif arguments.selectedLanguage neq client.lang>
<cfset client.lang = arguments.selectedLanguage />
</cfif>
<cfquery name=”get” dbtype=”query”>
select #arguments.selectedLanguage#, fieldName from application.dictionary
where 1=1
<cfif len(trim(arguments.wordList))>
and fieldName in (#preserveSingleQuotes(arguments.wordList)#)
</cfif>
</cfquery>
<cfset lang = structNew()>
<cfloop query=”get”>
<cfif not structKeyExists(lang, get.fieldName)>
<cfset structInsert(lang, get.fieldName, evaluate(“get.#arguments.selectedLanguage#”)) />
</cfif>
</cfloop>
<cfreturn lang />
</cffunction>
</cfcomponent>{/code}

Here is script for the table:{code type=coldfusion}USE [myDatabase]
GO
/****** Object: Table [dbo].[dictionary] Script Date: 08/04/2008 00:32:48 ******/
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
SET ANSI_PADDING ON
GO
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[dictionary](
[fieldName] [varchar](50) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NULL,
[en] [text] COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NULL,
[fr] [ntext] COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NULL,
[de] [ntext] COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NULL,
[pt] [ntext] COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NULL,
[es] [ntext] COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NULL
) ON [PRIMARY] TEXTIMAGE_ON [PRIMARY]
GO
SET ANSI_PADDING OFF{/code}