[Mediawiki-l] Understanding multi-language versions of wiki

[Hugh Prior]

I want to have a wiki in (say) English and French .  Does that mean I have 
to have 2 copies of the wiki software?!?

When I define, on my (shared hosting) host, I get by default a seperate 
directory for each sub-domain, e.g.
en.mysite.com  => /home/www/en.mysite.com
fr.mysite.com => /home/www/fr.mysite.com

I suppose therefore all I have to then do is install a version of the wiki 
software in each of these subdirectories, define an entry in the interwiki 
link table which says that a link like [[fr:My French Page]] is really a 
link to [[http://fr.mysite.com]], and bingo, the new wiki code in each 
directory will deal with it.

BUT, if I have 50 languages, I don't really want 50 copies of the wiki 
software!  Or is this the way I need to do it?  I can imagine setting up a 
single generic language version, such as:
generic.mysite.com => /home/www/generic.mysite.com
but then all my links go to that version, such that [[en:My English Page]] 
becomes a link to [[http://generic.mysite.com]] and [[fr:My French Page]] 
becomes a link to [[http://generic.mysite.com]] and I have lost the language 
information that "My English Page" is "en" and "My French Page" is "fr".

I hope I have explained clearly enough.  Thanks for any pointers.