question on html internationalization

We are looking into rendering a set of html pages in 4 different languages. We have the language experts who can translate what is defaulted in english to the other language.

One approach being proposed is to create 4 different sets of html pages for each language. I would think it is tedious and bad on maintenance.

Is there a other way around like having the html engine take care of it(if you define the correct font and language type)? instead of creating separate html page for each language??

I take it you cannot use server-side assist for some reason?

Any chance you could use a templating engine and move all your content out of HTML into XML or some easy-to-author repository? I worked a bit with a taglib that took x-path arguments and pulled data from an XML DOM.

Bear, is "server side assist" a product or just using server side code?

Originally posted by Stan James:
Bear, is "server side assist" a product or just using server side code?

The latter, for example, the fmt class of tags from the JSTL.

The problem is these are pure html pages that will be bundled for demo purposes. They will not have help of a webserver etc.

Then I might look for a templating engine to GENERATE the pages. I generate my SurfScranton site from a spreadsheet with some REXX Macros and upload it as static HTML. Right now you can see some bug generated an empty "Recent Additions" entry on the home page. Oops.
[ September 10, 2007: Message edited by: Stan James ]