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Does C# offer a way to translate strings on-the-fly or something similiar?

I'm now working on some legacy code, which has some parts like this:

section.AddParagraph(String.Format("Premise: {0}", currentReport.Tenant.Code));
section.AddParagraph(String.Format("Description: {0}", currentReport.Tenant.Name));

section.AddParagraph();

section.AddParagraph(String.Format("Issued: #{0:D5}", currentReport.Id));
section.AddParagraph(String.Format("Date: {0}", currentReport.Timestamp.ToString(
                     "dd MMM yyyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)));
section.AddParagraph(String.Format("Time: {0:HH:mm}", currentReport.Timestamp));

So, I want to implement the translation of these strings on-the-fly based on some substitution table (for example, as Qt does).

  • Is this possible (probably, using something what C# already has or using some post-processing - may be possible with PostSharp)?
  • Does some generic internalization approach for applications built with C# (from scratch) exist?
Yippie-Ki-Yay
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2 Answers2

6

Does some generic internalization approach for applications built with C# (from scratch) exist?

Yes, using resource files. And here's another article on MSDN.

Darin Dimitrov
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1

In the C# project I currently work on, we wrote a helper function that works like this:

 section.AddParagraph(I18n.Translate("Premise: {0}", currentReport.Tenant.Code));
 section.AddParagraph(I18n.Translate("That's all");

At build time, a script searches all I18n.Translate invocations, as well as all UI controls, and populates a table with all english phrases. This gets translated.

At runtime, the english text is looked up in a dictionary, and replaced with the translated text. Something similar happens to our winforms Dialog resources: they are constructed in english and then translated using the same dictionary.

The biggest strength of this scheme, is also the biggest weakness: If you use the same string in two places, it gets translated the same. This shortens the file you send to translater which helps to reduce cost. If you ever need to force a different translation of the same english word, you need to work around that. As long as we have the system (4ish years or so), we never had the need for it. There's also benefits: You read the english UI text inline with the source (so not hiding behind an identifier you need to name), and if you delete code, its automatically removed from the translated resources as well.