# Best Practices?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-practices/193841>\
**Category:** Rails I18n\
**Created:** [August 25, 2010, 12:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-practices/193841 "2010-08-25T12:55:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mitch\_newbie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ea5d25/32.png) [@mitch\_newbie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mitch_newbie)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 12:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-practices/193841/1 "2010-08-25T12:55:28Z")

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I understand the practice of using yaml files for language translations  
for basic things like labels, links etc.

But for large chunks of text that might contain a lot of markup for  
design etc what is the best way to offer sites in many languages?

Is it better to have those layouts done in separate languages?

Thanks

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mitch\_newbie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ea5d25/32.png) [@mitch\_newbie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mitch_newbie)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 5:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-practices/193841/2 "2010-08-25T17:44:28Z")

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I personally prefer to have separate layouts for big chunks (like the  
Privacy Policy, for example), because YAML files become impractical for  
strings with more than 3 lines.

I just create policy.en.html.erb, policy.fr.html.erb, etc. This  
certainly  
introduces some duplication but you can avoid that a bit by creating  
partials that contain only the text that needs to be translated and  
rendering those partials from a common layout.