How do YOU manage different languages?

[DanielChile]

Hi everyone,

I was wandering: ¿How do YOU manage different UI languages in your LabVIEW-built software?

For example, we have exported VI strings in the original language of our software (spanish), then edited the VIs for translation to english and re-exported the strings, so now we have different sets of string files for different languages.

At edit time we can manually import strings for every user interfase VI and then compile for different languages, but I was asking myself if there could be a better way. For example, I was thinking about importing the strings programmatically at run-time, but this is not possible, because "VI Strings.Import" method is not "Settable when the VI is running".

Any ideas?

Daniel

[crelf]

QUOTE (DanielChile @ Oct 24 2008, 10:07 AM)

I was thinking about importing the strings programmatically at run-time, but this is not possible, because "VI Strings.Import" method is not "Settable when the VI is running"

We have a reuse component that does our translations for us:

• Have the labels of your FP controls & indcators in your mother language (in this case, I'll assume English)
  
• Hide the labels and show the captions
  
• Have a look-up table (we have this in a file) that has all the different languages in it with respect to their English counterparts
  
• When the user wants to change the language, read all the labels and replace their captions with the selected language equivalent
  

Here's an example* (note - all this little VI in the middle does is look-up the new translation):

http://lavag.org/old_files/monthly_10_2008/post-181-1224858108.gif' target="_blank">

* Does not support items in containers yet (tab controls, etc) - you'd have to handle those specially. It wouldn't be difficult to do that - just traverse the container recursively.

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

QUOTE (crelf @ Oct 24 2008, 09:22 AM)

We have a reuse component that does our translations for us:

• Have the labels of your FP controls & indcators in your mother language (in this case, I'll assume English)
  
• Hide the labels and show the captions
  
• Have a look-up table (we have this in a file) that has all the different languages in it with respect to their English counterparts
  
• When the user wants to change the language, read all the labels and replace their captions with the selected language equivalent
  

Here's an example* (note - all this little VI in the middle does is look-up the new translation):

http://lavag.org/old_files/monthly_10_2008/post-181-1224858108.gif' target="_blank">

* Does not support items in containers yet (tab controls, etc) - you'd have to handle those specially. It wouldn't be difficult to do that - just traverse the container recursively.

Quite what we do here too including traversal of containers like tabs and subitems such as ring control texts, but the translation files get soon difficult to maintain and therefore we also try to avoid it if possible. Also you often end up not only translating captions but also data elements itself and that is even more complicated to get right.

Rolf Kalbermatter

[crelf]

QUOTE (rolfk @ Oct 25 2008, 06:28 PM)

...the translation files get soon difficult to maintain and therefore we also try to avoid it if possible.

Not for us - we use a professional translation service

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

QUOTE (rolfk @ Oct 26 2008, 12:28 AM)

Quite what we do here too including traversal of containers like tabs and subitems such as ring control texts, but the translation files get soon difficult to maintain and therefore we also try to avoid it if possible. Also you often end up not only translating captions but also data elements itself and that is even more complicated to get right.

Rolf Kalbermatter

QUOTE (crelf @ Oct 26 2008, 04:47 AM)

Not for us - we use a professional translation service

Yeah, but Rolf is from Switzerland so he speaks, Italian, French, German. His Dutch is quite good , not too sure about his English.

Ton

[DanielChile]

Thanks for your answers.

So it seems that any real (professional) solution to this means building your own "translation engine". Tricky.

Thank you,

Daniel R.

CLD

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

QUOTE (DanielChile @ Oct 27 2008, 09:11 AM)

Thanks for your answers.

So it seems that any real (professional) solution to this means building your own "translation engine". Tricky.

Thank you,

Daniel R.

CLD

There are some Alliance Members that do actually sell their localization solutions. Some are more or less a VI library, others come with extensive support for text editor interfaces for importing and exporting the relevant strings into a text format that can be easily handled by a professional translater without any knowledge of programming, including LabVIEW itself.

Toolkit type software:

SEA Datentechnik GmbH, LabVIEW Localization Toolkit

NI Resources

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/pub/p/id/99

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/3603

http://zone.ni.com/reference/en-XX/help/37...ng_labview_vis/

Rolf Kalbermatter

[DanielChile]

Thank you for your answer, Rolf. Very complete references.

SEA toolkit seems good to me. Have you tried that?

Regards,

Daniel R.

CLD

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

QUOTE (DanielChile @ Oct 27 2008, 03:14 PM)

Thank you for your answer, Rolf. Very complete references.

SEA toolkit seems good to me. Have you tried that?

Regards,

Daniel R.

CLD

Actually I haven't. Have been in communication about it at some time with them and you can request an evaluation version, so I think it should be fair.

Rolf Kalbermatter

[DanielChile]

QUOTE (rolfk @ Oct 27 2008, 05:31 PM)

Actually I haven't. Have been in communication about it at some time with them and you can request an evaluation version, so I think it should be fair.

Rolf Kalbermatter

All right. Thank you so much for your answers, everyone.

As always, LAVA has been very helpful.

¡Long live to LAVA!

Daniel R.

CLD