Multi Language Applications - how do YOU achieve "localizability" software?

[unshaven]

Hallo there!

 

I need some advice.

What way ist the best (is there a best?) to make your .NET software support multiple languages/regions etc.,

which way do YOU make your software "localizable" and why?

 

I read there is some built-in functionality in .NET to address this issue.

Is this stuff good? Why / why not, what options are there?

I'd like to hear (also) general answers here.

 

On a more specific thing:

 

One thing is,

say, if you pay external translation offices to get your menu, dialog, hint and whatnot texts translated into the different languages, there might arise problems like if they only have some text file with string IDs and the corresponding, say english expression, and they translate it, it might end up making the user of the particular language laugh his *** off because in the particular context, the translation makes no sense...

 

But you can't give the development environents to third party translators, so maybe it would be a good idea to make a tool program, where the translator sees how all will look like in the program to accordingly translate the texts?

And maybe re-adjust some layout parts because say russian captions are in average 20% longer than english ones?

 

 

 

So, let me hear your suggestions/expericence and advice!

 

thanks,

unshaven

[PlausiblyDamp]

Under .Net you can build resources into what are known as satelite assembles that can be dynamically loaded by the application.

A simple design time containing something like error messages would be called

Errors.resx

If you needed to support French clients you would create a version called

Errors.fr.resx

which would contain the French culture neutral version of the strings, for each culture you would then create another version:

Errors.fr-FR.resx

Errors.fr-CA.resx

etc.

Each of these contain values for the specific culture. At runtime it will check the most specific resource (e.g. fr-CA if you are in Canada) for the resource item, if it isn't there it falls back to the next level (fr) and finally the resources compiled into the executable if needed.

 

As well as simple strings there is also a tool called WinRes.exe that can be used to modify form layouts as well as just the text - the translators would require the Framework SDK but nothing else to make UI changes.

 

This MSDN Link has a brief overview of the tools required and this article covers the issues in a lot more depth.