Multi-Lingual Program, Best Practice?

Hi guys,

I want to put together the ability to add in multiple languages into a program I have written. The opening screen of this program is basically going to be a set of flags. Once a flag is selected the language will be loaded and all buttons and text in the program should run from that language.

What is the best practice in putting something like this together? Has anyone done it before? What problems am I likely to encounter?

Any suggestions on this would be very very helpful since I haven't been able to find much on the subject.

Thanks in advance,

Dominic

Hi,

If it's purely VB (no web etc. with HTML and such) I would create a table with all the strings in the various languages. The "flag" of choice would then constitute the first part of the key to the records. The second part - the actual string - I would place in the Tag property of the various controls. Read them and fill them on opening the forms.

Table InterfaceText
key LanguageCode Long
key TextCode Long
fld TextToDisplay Text

This leads to entries like: -
1 1 Main Form
2 1 Hauptformular
3 1 Hoofdscherm
1 2 Please make a choice from the menu
2 2 Treffen Sie bitte eine Wahl vom Menü
2 3 Maak aub een keuze uit het menu

where LanguageCode = 1 is English (obviously), 2 = German, 3 = Dutch and so on.

It's pretty easy this way to add or modify entries. Even an additional language is easily done. The only thing is to have enough space in the control to actually display the string.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Michiel

Hi,

Thanks very much for the reply.

I think you're method is sound, but now I have a new question! Having set this up, given a language like Arabic, how do you go about implimenting this? Obviously I can set the field types to nvarchar so that the special characters are supported, but what about reading it backwards and things like that?

Other programs must have to handle many different languages and formats, reading backwards or forwards. Does anyone know how this is done?

Hi,

There are methods and propertties relating to all sorts of controls handling these problems. For instance the property "readingorder" may be applied to get a right-to-left reading order for controls. Lots of other things (Like "KanjiConversionMode" etc.) are available. But I'm no export on that.

Michiel