I have copied a CakePHP site into several different directories and was able to get each of them working, but this latest time the site displays the correct Views, but the Models and Controllers from the original site.
There don't seem to be any obvious setting that points to the original site. Any ideas where I might look to fix this issue?
Check .htaccess, if it does none exist then build one.
this is easier than reprogramming the original site to display more than one language
That can be true, it doesn't make any sense and causes more work at the end. If the code is not an unbelievable pile of fail this can't be true.
If you duplicate the code, you'll always have to maintain two repos or branches, manage two sites and merge fixes between both. It's just silly to duplicate a whole app just because of translations.
How is that more hard than just adding __('Translateable string goes here') and if needed the TranslateableBehavior to the existing application? Getting the language in the URL, a problem? No, it's not.
Read that whole chapter of the book before sticking to your weird idea.
We're running a site with 18 languages, Chinese, Russisan, English... and using everything I named before that the framework offers. All in the very same code base and the app was migrated from 1.3 to 2.x and now to 3.x.