Greetings all,
I'm trying to localize a .NET/C# project. I'm using string resource files and setting the "Localizable" property on all my forms to 'True'. The assembly culture is empty. The resx/resource files are successfully passed through Lingobit, resgen, and al.
When running the localized executables, some of my forms are not localized (ones in which I know the Localizable flag is set) while others are. There are even a few forms which are localized but a button or two isn't. I cannot tell any difference between the non-localized forms/controls with the localized ones.
Anyone have an idea what I might be missing? Thanks!
When you open the form in Visual Studio, if you change the Language property of the Form to the language you are localizing to, does the same problem exist there? Could it be possible that the non-localized forms/buttons still have the English text set even in the localized resources?
Yeah, I'd go with Andy on this and be suspicious of the contents of the resource files. We dabbled with localisation for a time, and encountered a number of issues, but this certainly wasn't one of them.
If that isn't it, then how are you testing your app? If you haven't tried this already I'd suggest firing up a set of VMs with foreign language versions of Windows installed (rather than just changing the language settings on your machine) and seeing if that makes any difference.
Okay, I figured it out. You guys were correct. We were not generating the translated resx files correctly from Lingobit. Some of the files would get translated while others had the English text still in the resx.
Thanks for your help!
EDIT: Just to expand upon this, we specifically were messing up the al.exe command which takes the binary .resources file and creates a satellite assembly adding it to the executable's manifest. In the /embed command, you have to bind the resources file to a namespace. Our top-level name spaces were mapped correctly, but we weren't binding to sub-level namespaces on all of the resource files.
Related
I'm maintaining one program written in C# 2.0 (VS2005). It has pretty large codebase, lot of authors, it is almost internal app, but currently it is also one of our customers using it.
App is multilingual and translation of own forms and components works OK. But, there is one component - DockPanel Suite by WeifenLuo and I need to translate it to another language (zh-CN) - one of the chinese guys translated resource file to his language and now I'm trying to include and use in application, but I'm failing in it - although whole app is in chinese, this component remains in english. The untranslated resource file can be found on github: https://github.com/dockpanelsuite/dockpanelsuite/blob/master/WinFormsUI/Docking/Strings.resx
How to do that? I tried almost everything, naive approach (just resgen and compile by al, and trying to use it as satellite assembly - also tried ilmerge), then opening DockPanelSuite in VS2013 Express, adding resx as Strings.zh-CN.resx, but nothing works and tooltips and others are still in english.
Tried also stepping-in with debugger, but debugger broke at tooltip = Strings.DockPaneCaption_ToolTipAutoHide but it didn't step into getter defined in Strings.Designer.cs
I'm stuck and I don't know, how to do that. Any idea? Thanks very much!
I was able to translate a label in the demo application in a very simple process:
git clone the library
Copy & paste the Strings.resx file
Rename the copy into Strings.pt-BR.resx
Compile, it's done (in my case, I translated the "Close" label)
however, this project contains many Strings.resx files
Did you change all of them? Or did you just change one? (maybe a wrong one, like I did in my first try)
For my globalized C# Windows Forms projects I set the designer value Localizable to true to store my default labels automatically into resx files.
My question is: Is there a build-in way or setting to determine and log that
ResourceManager.GetString("TranslatedLabel", resourceCulture);
wasn't able to find a translation for given resourceCulture and therefore took value from invariant resx file?
It would be nice to have these issues reported within an error log.
Till now I can only find projects that compare resx files and try to find missing keys (e.g. http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/322037/Localization-Sync).
But for those tools you need to take care of every single component that is translated. So the possibility to miss one is way to high.
One way to find missing ResX entries is by using ResEx. This is a VS extension that displays resources in different languages side-by-side and highlights missing entries in red. You can also filter the view to only show resources with missing entries.
Since ResEx (mentioned by theDmi) isn't easy installable, because you could only download the archived project from Codeplex, I want to recommend ResXManager.
It is my first time to use resx file to store strings in Visual Studio. It's so weird that when I modified something on designer.cs, and saved it, all strings in resx were gone. Does anyone meet this issue before? How to solve it? Thanks!
You should not edit Form.resx files manually. Together with Form.Designer.cs files they should only be edited with the use of winform designer.
Form.resx and Form.locale.resx files contains all resources associated with that form controls: icons, cursors, images, localization strings, etc.
If you need to put custom resources, then simply create separate resx-files (see here of how to work with them).
It is still a question, if you really need to use resource files. Having static class to store strings is much more comfortable way, you will have all power of intellisence (find all references, no spelling errors, etc), while accessing resources required specifying identificator, where you can very easily make a mistake or two. If you think about localization, then it's different story (but still, you can use reflection and text-files to have it way more comfortable then microsoft satellite way).
Form.resx is only used by WinForms designer, so leave it alone in all cases.
The contents stored in such designer managed resource files can be,
Form icons
Control tooltips if their contents are longer than a predefined length
ImageList contents
and many other (which is undocumented)
Like #Kilazur pointed out, you should store your own resources in newly created resource files that are not controlled by the designer.
I have a WinForms application which I want to translate into multiple languages. However, I do not have any experience with localizing a WinForms app, and I find very contradictory information about this subject.
Basically, what I want is:
In the source code, I want only one file per language
This file gets compiled into the main application on compilation - no satellite assemblies or external data files after building the application
The user can select the language, I do not need/want auto-detection based on the operating system
This should mainly contain strings and ints, but also a CultureInfo
Most solutions I've seen either have one .resx file per Form and/or external satellite assemblies.
Do I have to roll my own?
Or is there something in the framework already?
.net Framework 3.5 SP1 if that matters.
Edit:
For the most part, Visual Studio already offers support for what I want, but there are two issues. When I set Form.Localizable to true I have this nice Designer support, but this generates one resx per Form. The idea of manually overriding it in InitializeComponent fails because it's designer-written code that will regularly be overwritten.
Theoretically, I only want to :
a) override the creation of the ComponentResourceManager to point it to my global resx and
b) change the call to ApplyResources to the overload that takes a CultureInfo as third parameter.
It seems as if I have to add a function call to my constructor that gets called after InitializeComponent() and overrides its behaviour. That seems terribly inefficient, but Visual Studio is right when it warns about touching InitializeComponent().
At the moment, I am indeed rolling my own WinForms localization Framework...
I've just completed a C# .Net 3.5 project with a similar problem. We were writing WinForms plugin for an existing multi-lingual application with 8 languages (including English).
This is how we did it:
Create all our forms and UI in the default language, English.
Put all our internal strings in a resource file (stuff not tied directly to a form like custom error messages and dialog box titles etc)
Once we had completed most of the work and testing we localised it.
Each form already had a .resx file but this was empty. We set the property 'Localizable' to true, the .resx file was filled with things like button sizes & strings.
For each of the other languages, we changed the 'Language' property on the form. We chose the basic version of each language eg: 'Spanish' instead of 'Spanish (Chile)' etc. so that it would work for every 'Spanish' dialect, I think.
Then we went through each control, translated its text and resized, if needed. This created a .resx per language and form combination.
We were then left with, for 8 languages, 8 .resx for each form and 8 .resx for the general strings. When compiled the output folder had the .dll we were creating and then a sub folder for each language with a .resources.dll in it.
We were able to test the versions of the UI in the designer by just changing the language property to check that we had the correct strings & layout.
All in all once we got our heads around it, it was quite easy and painless.
We didn't need to write any custom tweaks to the form loading
I was asking a similar question about ASP.NET and got a first answer - this tool and its workflow might also be something for you - have a look: Lingobit Localizer
It seems to be able to load your Winforms app and allows you to start translating your labels etc. and see the forms while you do it. Lots of other features, too, like incremental translation and translation memory (if you use the same terms over and over again).
Looks quite promising (for Winforms) - haven't used it myself, though.
Here's an extensive list of potential .NET localization tools - not sure, how well they work and what they cover - have a look, maybe you'll find what you're looking for.
Marc
I dont have a solution for your first and second requirement but keep in mind that localizing a form is not as simple as translating each word. You need to check that each translated text fits in their respective control. Also, maybe you have an icon or an image which need to be change in another culture.
For your point three, you can change the language manually with the following lines:
CultureInfo ci = new CultureInfo("fr");
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = ci;
This is a huge subject and there are many ways to accomplish what you want. The framework does provide the basis but a complete solution requires that you implement certain elements yourself.
For example the default framework implementation is to create a .resx file for every resource. In ASP.Net this means each user/server control or page. This doesn't lend itself to easy maintenance and if you want to move resources to a database you need to implement your own provider.
My familiarity with Winforms is limited but if you are using Silverlight or WPF then have a read of Guy Smith-Ferrier's work on the subject at: http://www.guysmithferrier.com/category/Internationalization.aspx. He also has some toolsets that can make your life easier at: http://www.dotneti18n.com/Downloads.aspx.
I've worked with him before and have never come across anyone else with a better depth of understanding of the subject.
What you are asking for:
no satellite resource files
only one size and control placement per form.
lots of languages embedded in the executable.
Is not do-able in vanilla Visual Studio's IDE.
What it would require is some custom work, basically fulfilling all these steps:
Acquire a custom resource manager that handles TMX resource files.
Put all your localizable strings in a TMX file.
Make this TMX file an embedded resource in your project.
In your Form constructor, create your TMX ResourceManager, loading the TMX file from your embedded resources.
In your code, use your tmx ResourceManager instead of the default ResourceManager for getting localized strings.
Let the Form use the default ResourceManager for getting all the designer things except the strings.
Get your TMX file fleshed out with the new language translations.
More can be added in the next release of your project, just by adding them to this TMX file before you compile.
RESOURCES: (not an exhaustive list, by any means)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_Memory_eXchange
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tmx-editor/
The right way to do this is, suppose you want to add Arabic support witch is RightToLeft language:
Double click the form
Set localizable prop. to true
Change Language prop. to Arabic //This will automatically open a new version of the form so you can customize.
Set RightToLeft prop. to Yes
Set RightToLeftLayout prop. to True
Start renaming controls, and save the form.
Handle Messages/Errors in code // Sorry I don't have a quick solution for now, try duplicate them and If/Else the current local.
We have a resource file with lots of translated strings used various places in our application. Is there a better way for binding for example the text of a button to a certain string?
Currently we are usually just doing something like this in the constructor, in a Load event handler or in a method called by one of those:
someButton.Text = CommonTexts.SomeString;
someMenuItem.Text = CommonTexts.SomeOtherString;
Is there a better way to do it? Maybe in the designer? Or is this the recommended way of doing it?
Just to let you know how we do the actual translation: We have one Class Library project which only contains resx files. The main resx files are written in english (of course). We then open up those base resx files in an application called ResEx where we (or someone else) does the translation to other languages. When compiled Visual Studio automatically creates assemblies for each language which are used automatically depending on the current culture set. This works pretty well, so I don't really need info on how to do the translation and such (although I am always curious to improvements of course). What I am asking is if there is a better way for getting those translated strings from the resource assembly and into all the various Text properties.
I understand, it's an old question, but still, I had the same issue (VS 2010), and one of the first links in google is this topic.
In order to move all the texts to forms resource file - you need to set the winform Localizable property to True. And that's it. :)
(c) Cap. O.
You can do:
using System.Resources;
using System.Reflection;
Assembly assembly = this.GetType().Assembly;
resman = new ResourceManager("StringResources.Strings", assembly);
btnButton.Text = resman.GetString("ButtonName");
There is a good tool called LingoBit Localizer that does the job for the fraction of the time it would take to build all the reasources files.
You don't have to care about other languages while in development process, you simply code and set properties as you would if you were programming for a unilingual software. After you're done, or whenever you wish, you run LingoBit Localizer over your DLL or Windows Form application. This will get user-displayable strings out to a grid for you within its GUI. Now, perhaps a professional translator could use to translate the words if your programmers don't know the language for which the applicaiton have to be translated. Then, you simply save the project when you're done. This will create a DLL file which you simply add to your binary deployment directory, then your application will automatically set itself to the right language depending on the current culture information on which the app. is installed or so. This saves a lot of programming time and headaches.
Hope this helps even though it is not resource-based solution.
This will extract the the value of Home keyword and populate into the Text1 Box.
Text1.Text= Resource.Home.ToString();
Try this:
someButton.DataBindings.Add("Text", CommonTexts, "SomeString");
Your way is the best way to do this if you have developers who are not personally fluent in the languages you're translating your application into. I've done this before with an English application that had to be translated into Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese (I only speak one of these semi-fluently). The original forms were all created in English, and in the form's Load event the code iterated through every control and searched for each control's Text property in a translations spreadsheet, and replaced it with the appropriate translation.
The built-in way of internationalizing a form (which is basically a variant of form inheritance) assumes that the programmer is fluent in the language you need to translate to, which is pretty much of a stretch, and it requires you to manually enter all the translated text values for each form and each language. It also makes your binary larger (potentially much larger), since it adds a .resx file for each form for each language that you support.