Hello component/module developers.

Is your component already multi lingual?

No: So why not integrate the MambelFish with some little lines of code and 
improve the functionallity of your component with very little efforts.

What do you need to do?
1. XML File for component/module translation
You need to define a little XML file which defines which of your new tables should be translated and how.

This is an example for the content tables of the core component
Code:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<mambelfish type="contentelement">
  <name>Contents</name>
  <author>A. Kempkens</author>
  <version>1.0</version>
  <description>Definition for Mambo content</description>
  <reference>
     <table name="content">
        <field type="referenceid" name="id" translate="0">ID</field>
        <field type="titletext" name="title" translate="1">Title</field>
        <field type="htmltext" name="introtext" translate="1">Introtext</field>
        <field type="htmltext" name="fulltext" translate="1">Fulltext</field>
        <field type="created_date" name="created" translate="0">Created</field>
        <field type="modified_date" name="modified" translate="0">Modified</field>
        <field type="checked_out_by" name="checked_out" translate="0">Check out by</field>
        <field type="checked_out_date" name="checked_out_time" translate="0">Check out date</field>
     </table>
  </reference>
</mambelfish>


It's generally pretty simple. The only thing you need to do here is to define which table is 
used by your component and which are the fields that need to be translated. You do not need 
to edit something else to allow your users to translate the content of your component.

2. Writing proper SQL queries
The only thing which now can make you headache are the SQL statements. MambelFish is directly
integrated in the database abstraction layer of Mambo. So each query you send to the database
will be checked and translated into the actual language if possible.

Please make sure that you are using the same field names as defined in the XML and try to integrate
the primary key (normally the field id) within your queries. Then you just should have fun.

Best regards

Alex