Multiple languages

I've set up a catalog with sales outlets for a website, and it works like a charm. I have to translate it into German and English, and after reading the tutorial, I don't understand how to do it.
The tutorial says I have to recreate all the fields, but give them their names in their respective languages. So, I copy the fields and give them a new name, however, the translation needs a different column name in the database table. But if that's so, how is the new fieldname supposed to use the information from that same table?
So I have a Dutch fieldname "Naam" that uses the column "name" from the table "sales_outlets". How do I get an English field called "Name" that uses the data from the "name" column?

I must be missing something obvious...

There is a Tutorial explaining how to do multiple languages. Unfortunately the Wiki was changed by leo (as the underlying system was changed), so we're trying to convert all the current wiki's into the new ones. Look at the Sticky topic and you'll find the link to the Multi-Language Tutorial.

Hi Thyon,

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I'd found the tutorial, but as I said: I don't understand it. The catalog contains a table with nearly 500 sales outlets, and visitors can search/filter the catalog to find a sales outlet nearest to them. Let me try to explain:
For example, these are two of the fields (in Dutch):

Provincie [province:select]
Plaats [city:text]

When I add these fields in English, I can't use the data from the necessary columns. For example, this will give an error:

Province [province:select]
City [city:text]

Because [province:select] and [city:select] are already in use (since you can't have duplicate column names). So it's not clear to me how I add extra column names, without having to duplicate the entire catalog (for example to something like: Province [province-en:select], City [city-en:select] ).
Do you know what I mean? Do you have any suggestions how to solve this? Or am I, as stated before, missing something obvious?

Emiel

Did you not understand the part where you have to duplicate the entire catalog for another language. LOL.

This is the problem because even though TL supports multiple languages, the system was not designed to handle the same database in multiple languages. For example, to make a English Site and a German site, you actually have to create two separate root sites and duplicate each page. This would be the same for your catalog. Either you have to create two catalogs or you have to create multiple fields for each language (where a language is required to be entered). The BE cannot be viewed in ONLY 1 language, it will list ALL information per field. The FE can be customised to only show the fields for each language, and then you can override the default "field label" for each field that is shared, e.g. a SELECT list.

I recommend you do this:

Genre: [select drop down]
Description (en): text
Beschreibung (de): text
Descrizione (it): text

Then when you render the template for german site pages, you use a template that only shows the German fields, e.g. Genre (shared) and Beschreibung (de). You will have to make your own custom template that overrides the english label for Genre as well to make that "German" on that page.

As you can see its a bit of work to set it all up.

Thanks, I understand now. Indeed, I was thinking you could use the same catalog for multiple languages... :-)