[TYPO3-mvc] How to deal with complicated translation/language requirements "the extbase way"?

[Andreas Kießling]

Hi,

i am planning to use extbase for a rather complicated project with a lot 
of different languages. extbase and fluid will surely help to provide a 
neat and clean structure for the project, but i fear, that i will have 
write a lot of sql statements...


I found some places where the statements are prepared with 
getRespectEnableFields / addEnableFieldsStatement and finally 
doLanguageAndWorkspaceOverlay get's called, but this won't be sufficient 
for the project.


Let me give you an example:
I have a table with products. All products are in one sysfolder and get 
translated, if they are available in a different language. 
sys_language_overlay is usually set to hideNonTranslated.

What if a product is not available in the default language? I sometimes 
work around that problem with multiple sysfolders and create records 
only in the language that i need, but if the product is available in 2 
or more other languages, i like to create a hidden record in default 
language and translate that record so the backend is as simple and clean 
as possible for all users. For the frontend rendering of the non default 
languages, all records with sys_language_uid = 0 are fetched, even if 
they are hidden (cObj->enableFields with showHidden setting turned on), 
so the translated records can be fetched with getRecordOverlay.

How do you deal with this problem?

I often thought about using the default language only as a way to group 
all translation, but not to render it in the frontend. So the default 
record can stay visible, and the overlays can be created and/or hidden 
as needed, l10n_mode can be set to exclude, etc. . This on the other 
hand might produce heavy load on the database, because every record is 
fetched and checked for translation. Also, the clients do not 
understand, why they can't use the default language and need to create 
all records at least twice.


Regards,
Andreas