How do you guys handle translation/internationalization of your ASP.NET applications? How do you work with your translators?
We have ASP.NET apps that need to be available in German, French, Italian, English. We use string resources everywhere. However, more than once, our translators have told us just getting a bunch of "txtMyTextbox.Text" and then a German text to be translated is next to impossible to deal with - the context is missing.
So are there any other solutions available? Due to the fact these translators are dispersed all over Europe, we cannot get them to fly in and do their work "on location" - there has to be a way to send them the text fragments to be translated, along with some context, and let them do their work.
Is there any tool out there that would allow me to package up my ASPX pages and ASCX controls along with the text resources, and that would actually visualize them to the translator (without him having to install and host IIS and all) ? I vaguely remember there was a lot one tool in my olden Delphi days that did that - visualize the form (without the real app running), and allowing someone to pick the labels and translate them.
Or would there be a tool that would allow me to make screenshots of my ASPX pages and highlight all label and display their control name ("txtMytextbox") in red, so that the screenshot could serve as an orientation help for someone working on translating a list of labels?
Any hints are most welcome and highly appreciated!
Marc
take a look at the Lingobit http://www.lingobit.com/
How about going around ASP.NET's insternationalization scheme and using a diferent approach, using .po files like the "rest of the world" . The actual text is the key, and translators see that text qhen they are translating. Works pretty well.
http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2010/03/fixing-internationalization-in-aspnet.html
describes this.
Make your resource keys more meaningful. This will give them some context
Can the translators get access to a running app? If so, you could set the tooltips of all your labels to be the resource key. That would allow them to mouse over a label to see where its string is coming from.
As your translators become more familiar with the product, they'll be able to better cope with the lack of context. The first time around is a little rough, and you'll need to go through a few rounds of testing and translation revisions. There's not much you can do about it.
Here is the article written by Scott Hanselman. Hope it helps
Globalization, Internationalization and Localization in ASP.NET
Related
I'm working on a project where user's submit data and then it is put onto a state form that they can print and submit. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, the form looks similar to an IRS 1040 form (https://www.healthykids.org/_img/document_1040.gif).
We've recently discovered that the form generated by our software isn't close enough to be accepted by some state's OCR process.
We're looking for some way to quickly create stylesheets or something similar so that the data can be overlayed on a scan of the original form and then printed. We've tested to ensure this works, however the lost time of trying to get the positioning right for every version of the form for each state has become a huge problem.
I'm looking for a tool or technique that would help me roll out each form faster.
The web application is based on Code Igniter. Our company prefers open source solutions but if a proven proprietary product exists we would certainly use it due to the critical nature of the issue.
Thank you very much for any help.
First, the obvious. Most web IDE's do this with ease (I know both Microsoft Visual Studio and Adobe Dreamweaver would allow you to visually position the elements above the image without problems).
I take it you are looking for a tool that lets you design the forms as part of the web application itself. One of the related links points to Suggestions for a JavaScript form builder?.
Other than that, if you know your Javascript and jQuery/extjs etc, it should be pretty quick to write a simple "put the textfields above the image" (absolute-positioning + drag and drop) type of web interface.
I'm just getting started using Resharper with VS-2008, and one of the 'errors' it gave me was to localize a Label's text in the code-behind. I've worked with Localization before to Localize a website from english into french, but I don't understand what the benefit is to localizing beside that usage.
If it's an internal application that you're not going to be distributing, there's not much of a benefit to it. It may be handy to collect all your strings in one central location for easy maintenance later, but only you know whether that's worth the effort on your specific project.
That's a bit like asking what the benefit of addition is beyond adding two numbers together.
Localization is generally about presenting the most relevant user experience to each user with minimal code changes - giving each user a "skin" using their language and regional settings (e.g. for things like formatting numbers appropriately).
Granted very many web sites aren't localized at all, but R# is prompting you do give your users the best possible experience :)
I have large documents (HTML or Text) (think legal documents/regulatory documents etc.) that need to made readable i.e. paged, with some rich-text markup, allowing user highlighting and annotation etc.
I was thinking of using a Scribd style rendering or as on Secwatch.com (see here). Any thoughts how I can go about it? We are on ASP.NET.
Found one article that does something similar:
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/ckrause/Ajax-browser-based06162006015526AM/Ajax-browser-based.aspx?ArticleID=548dfae2-4251-4c9a-b659-bfe88fd55c62
Needs some plugin, am not sure if you are OK to go for a third party control.
EDIT(s):
1) Just realized that Scribd runs of Ruby on the Rails. I guess that could be a starting point if you want to look at developing something on your own. (What does RoR have that ASP.NET doesn't for this particluar case?)
2) Scribd provides an API, but mostly for interfacing your app to sribd.com. However, it might give you ideas.
I am working on a multilingual web application. I'm wondering how do i design the best user interface that the user can localize data for various languages? for instance, in making a page which its title is different in every lang, do i put a textbox for every one? it's not a suitable way to do(in case of 10 lang, the user has 10 textbox!!! too silly)
what is your idea about this?
Edit: i have no problem with globalization in my system. in fact, i'm looking for a good way for my interface design which user can enter his data to my forms in various langs.
thanks in advance
What about only one textfield and a dropdown containing the languages. After selecting the language and filling out the textfield the field gets submitted and the chosen language disappears from the dropdown list.
the entered value and language then appears beneath the dropdown and textbox with a way to edit/delete it. this way it's always clear to the user which languages are already covered and which values are assigned to them. furthermore it's a nicer way if not all 10 languages have to be mandatorily filled in, if the user e.g. just knows english and french.
Hope you know what I mean, otherwise I'll have to create an example screenshot :-)
You could have 3 text boxes, and that's fine...get to 10, and it starts getting a bit crazy. Beyond that it starts looking pretty bad.
Maybe you could put up to say 5 text boxes up...but if it goes beyond 5 (because the user desires localization for more than 5 places) it places a single textbox with a dropdown next to it, and the dropdown would contain the current language.
Textbox would auto-populate with the current value for the language selected in the dropdown. Should work well in asp.net, and it can be done both client side, or server side on a post back pretty easily, so you don't need to do anything crazy for people not running javascript.
You have one text box.
On load you populate the text box depending on language.
The content will be populated from some kind of resource file. If there isn't much text it could even go in your config file.
Be aware of the following:
Different content length depending on language.
Right to Left alphabets screwing up your alignment
This is a classic project for using NUNIT or similar to promve that things work after new translations are added!
What language do you use in development? If this is something like PHP, then you definitely should use templates and load text strings into them from configuration files for every language. In Smarty, for example, I use configuration files for that.
Text strings for error messages or something like that could be put to files like .ini and loaded from there.
The Google Web Toolkit (GWT) demo shows the same page with versions available in English, French, Arabic and Chinese.
The GWT docs have a thorough discussion of internationalization. You could emulate their implementation.
Constants: Useful for localizing typed constant values
Messages: Useful for localizing messages requiring arguments
ConstantsWithLookup: Like Constants but with extra lookup flexibility for highly data-driven applications
Dictionary: Useful when adding a GWT module to existing localized web pages
Remember that dates and times are represented differently in different locales, if your forms use them.
The W3C also discusses Internationalization Best Practices in HTML content.
Normally, a user navigating a website will have a preference specifying the language of the whole site. I think it would be confusing to break this pattern.
So, in an intro page, or a user preferences page, allow the user to select a language; then, on the other pages, display a consistent set of controls to be able to edit the content on each page.
Are you making an administration page that allows users to change the text used in other pages in the application?
If so, you could use grid like in Zeta Resource Editor:
thumbnail http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/7813/zetaresourceeditor02.th.png
Or you could make a per-language list like in nopCommerce:
thumbnail http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/9079/nopcommerce.th.png
You can use javascipts as a resource file for your language like. language_arabic.js, language_english.js,etc.So when a use wants to see his preference language he/she has select the available languages from drop down list. Regarding this the user has to change the language settings from his/her computer. This is what I did while I was working a GIS project to customize a Geocortex IMF( http://demos.geocortex.net/imf-5.2.2/sites/demo_geocortex/jsp/launch.jsp ) site for an Arabic client.
I have a question about localization
how can i do localization lets say that i have a dropdown list
that holds the available languages: English,french and arabic
and I have a label which get it says "good morning",so i want to change the lang. according to selected lang. in drop down list so when the user chooses french label will say "bonjour" and when the user slect arabic the label will hold "صباح الخير" AND MOVE IT FROM THE LEFT OF THE PAGE TO THE RIGHT BECAUSE ARABIC IS WRITTEN FROM RIGHT TO LEFT ,,
ANY HELP WILL BE HIGHLY APPERCAITED
THNX IN ADVACE
In short, localization in ASP.NET is fully supported using resource files, e.g. files containing strings, images and other resources for each user interface language. They're named after the culture, for example MyResources.en-US.resx or MyCulture.fr-FR.resx.
The only thing that is a bit tricky is handling LTR and RTL languages and, as far as I know, must be done "manually", via code, or via CSS.
You might want to check some documentation on MSDN.
Have you ever saw the Localization video tutorials from ASP.NET website?
How Do I: Create a Multi-Lingual Site with Localization?
and
How Do I: Localize an ASP.NET AJAX Application?
They are great to get you started...
you can create an http module that is going to read the html from the output stream and translate it,use RegEx and make sure not to translate html tags and JavaScript
there is also the asp.net standard (built-in) way, with resource files, just right click your project and click add items resource file, you must create a resource file for each language like for example: MUI.resx (that's the neutral one), MUI.fr.resx, MUI.es.resx, and you are going to use them in the web pages like this: MUI.keyword , that's if you are going to have one resx per language for all pages, you could also have one resx per language per webform.
And the current language is in the System.Threading.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture
google it a little bit you will find more, at least now you know what to look for