What are options are there to implement a multi language site

What is the best way to have multiple languages on a site?

I was thinking of using WP3.0 and then having each language of the site being a seperate blog in a sub directory. I.E.

• example.com
• example.com/fr/
• example.com/de/

And then just being able to have one theme that all the sites share.

Is there a better way to do this? What do you think?

WordPress has no bi/multi-language feature built in by default. Instead, by design it supports the content to be in one language (so not knowing language). Using multiple blogs for multiple languages might be a good adoption of that design.

The other road would be to extend the site with Add-Ons like plugins and themes that have multi-language features built-in.

The WordPress Documentation offers some information about Multilingual WordPress making assumptions, pro/con comparisons and plugin/theme recommendations there. This scopes alternative approaches like:

• Manage multilingual posts in one post per language
• Store all languages alternatives for each post in the same post
• Manage translations on the generated page instead of using a post context
• Plugins that direct you to external translation services
• Plugins that link together separate WordPress installations for each language by pinging back and forth