On the Sanisoft blog today, there's a quick tutorial demonstrating how to create a multilingual application with the CakePHP framework:

There are basic two ways to creating a multilingual app in traditional PHP [...] CakePHP V1.2 is the framework which allows you to take the quantum leap of using gettext like functionality with minimum of hassles and at the same time address the common problems which a PHP programmer faces while creating multilingual apps.

They give an example of a simple translation of a sentence (including working with .po files). They show how to integrate the example string, create the .po file with the translation and configure the language to pull the correct phrasing to display to the page.

In a new post on the Northclick blog today, there's a tutorial that looks to make it easy to use the gettext functionality that PHP offers to internationalize your site.

This tutorial is for people who start or want to optimize the internationalization of their PHP Apps. We wrote it due the lack of useful resources. Although there are many tutorials for gettext out there it is still a very complicated issue.

They start with the Pros and Cons of using the functionality like "it's the defacto-standard for i18n of unix systems and their applications" versus things like "debbuging gettext can be hard in PHP". The rest of the post is broken up into five steps:

• Generate Functions and init gettext
• Translate your Application
• Generate a pot file (Template)
• Generate your PO Files from your POT Template and translate
• Generate Binaries

They also offer some helpful hints too like how to update the translation files and some solutions to some common issues you might come across.

On the IBM developerWorks site, there's a new article looking to help you internationalize your applications easily.

Localizing an application can be planned, or it can happen as a rushed afterthought. Discover techniques and tools such as gettext, XML, XSLT, and design patterns that can help when retrofitting localization into a mature product or planning for localization up front.

They start with a bit of a guide on how to assess the situation and see what would need to be considered before even starting on the process (looking at a Yahoo RSS feed). There's a brief look at some terminology, then its right into the code - retrofitting your content (the RSS feed) via XML content and the gettext functionality.

The also include a design pattern for localization in the MVC style that handles the transformation automatically.

On cyberlot's blog, he takes a second look at the Zend Framework.

I am a huge fan of the Savant template system so I thought I really should give this Framework a shot since Paul was hired by Zend to work on the framework and is one of the masterminds behind the views system.

After browsing around I quickly could tell the areas that Paul had blessed with his insight so I took to doing to Zend Framework what I had done to Savant3, making an extremely easy way to use gettext with your site.

He provides three links to illustrate how easy it is:

• a past article on the subject
• a development site with the example working
• the source for the site provided in a version tracking system