# Internationalization options

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/internationalization-options/119071>\
**Category:** Rails I18n\
**Created:** [November 2, 2007, 9:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/internationalization-options/119071 "2007-11-02T21:20:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![cremes](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/e19b73/32.png) [@cremes](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/cremes)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2007, 9:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/internationalization-options/119071/1 "2007-11-02T21:20:52Z")

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Hi,

I’m new to ruby and rails. I need support for for localized pages, pages  
with multilingual content, international date/time formats, and calendar  
and time zone calculations.

Initially, I asked someone on the ICU project  
[http://www.icu-project.org/](http://www.icu-project.org/) and they directed me to ICU4R  
[http://icu4r.rubyforge.org/](http://icu4r.rubyforge.org/). I thought that this was my solution until  
I scrolled down and found this comment:  
“The code is slow and inefficient yet, is still highly experimental,  
so can have many security and memory leaks, bugs, inconsistent  
documentation, incomplete test suite. Use it at your own risk.”

Next, I found this link:  
[http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/InternationalizationComparison](http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/InternationalizationComparison)

Globalize [http://www.globalize-rails.org/globalize/](http://www.globalize-rails.org/globalize/) looks very  
up-to-date and well supported. And every time I ask people about  
internationalization options, they seem to either mention Globalize or  
say that they don’t know.

Is Globalize the most widely used option? Do people on this list  
recommend Globalize or other options?

thanks,  
Chuck

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![cremes](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/e19b73/32.png) [@cremes](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/cremes)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2007, 10:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/internationalization-options/119071/2 "2007-11-05T10:21:08Z")

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Hi Chuck,

Chuck R. wrote:

> Is Globalize the most widely used option? Do people on this list  
> recommend Globalize or other options?

Globalize is probably is one of the most widely used solutions for  
internationalisation in Rails, given, as you say, it is well looked  
after and provides a very easy solution to integrate with your Rails  
project.

However, I suspect most people are slightly suspicious about the way  
translations are handled, everything in Globalize is stored in three  
tables, including one master table that contains all of your  
translations in every language. If your into wanting to make DB access  
as minimal and efficient as possible, like me, then this may or may not  
ring bells. Personally, I now use Gettext for all of my web application  
texts, as its very mature and while initially it takes a bit of  
understanding, it offers the most complete solutions for handling  
strings. Having said that, I did use Globalize in one major project and  
it works great!

One thing you should bare in mind, is the distinction between  
translating the application (the text in the views) and the data models.  
Globalize will throw these together in the same basket, but I’m not  
convinced this is an ideal solution. Checkout my plugin  
‘translate\_columns’ for a description of the problems and a solution  
that I came up with:

[http://samlown.com/page/RailsTranslateColumnsPluginReadme](http://samlown.com/page/RailsTranslateColumnsPluginReadme)

This only handles models, so you’d need to find another solution, such  
as globalize or gettext, for your views.

I18n is quite complex, and requires a bit of thought to implement well,  
but stick with it, its worth the effort!

Cheers, Sam