Htaccess alias redirect fake multilanguage url - .htaccess

Question

I have a domain www.domain.com with this kind of url
www.domain.com/my-italian-page.html (already rewritten by others htaccess rules)
I'd like to create a fake multilanguage url like
www.domain.com/my-english-page.html
The user will see in the address bar the rewritter url www.domain.com/my-english-page.html but the content that I'd like to show is the original www.domain.com/my-italian-page.html .
I'm on a shared server so I can't use apache vhost rule so I have to find a solution via htaccess.
Someone could help me to find the right way?
Thanks

Answer 1

So you want english URLs pointing to italian content? Hope your php script that generates these rewrite rules does the translating. But you'd do this for each one of your pages:
RewriteRule ^/?english-page.html$ /italian-page.html [L]
for each one of your pages.

Answer 2

Generally you want to keep the code executed in the web server as small as possible, so having a rewrite rule for each page is not usually a good idea. I suggest to implement this the way most CMS work when SEO URLs are enabled:
Rewrite any url (mydomain/anytext.html [actually you should not use the .html extension either]) to a script (eg. mydomain.tld/translate.php)
Use content of $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] (should contain anytext.html) to display the correct page
Set correct HTTP response code if page does not exist: http_response_code(...) (see end of this answer for a function on php5 below 5.4: PHP: How to send HTTP response code?)
Sample .htaccess (actually originally "stolen" and severely modified from a typo3 setup)
RewriteEngine On
# Uncomment and modify line below if your script is not in web-root
#RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-s
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule (.*) translate.php$1 [L]
Very basic pseudo-code-like (not tested, there may be syntax errors) example:
<?php
// using a database? you have to escape the string
$db = setup_db();
$page = db->escape_string(basename($_SERVER['PATH_INFO']));
$page = my_translate_query($page);
// no database? do something like this.
$trans = array( 'english' => 'italian', 'italian' => 'italian' );
$page = 'default-name-or-empty-string';
if(isset($_SERVER['PATH_INFO'])) {
if(isset($trans[basename($_SERVER['PATH_INFO'])])) {
$page = $trans[$trans[basename($_SERVER['PATH_INFO'])]];
}
else {
http_response_code(404);
exit();
}
}
// need to redirect to another script? use this (causes reload in browser)
header("Location: otherscript.php/$page");
// you could also include it (no reload), try something like this
$_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] = '/'.$page;
// you *may* have to modify other variables like $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']
// to point to the other script
include('otherscript.php');
?>
I saw in your answer that you have another script - dispatcher.php - which you seem reluctant to modify. I modified my response accordingly, but please keep in mind that by far the easiest way would be to just modify the existing script to handle any English paths itself.