Internationalization

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Mark - 25 Jan 2008 15:42 GMT

I was informed today that my Java program might be used in several other
countries, including China, Romania, and some Spanish-speaking countries
in South America.

This mostly impacts the GUI where I have menu items, tool-tips, and
dialog messages -- all in English, currently.

I haven't a clue what I should do to make my GUI internationalized. I
am seeking guidance on this...

I read the article at:
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2SE/locale/ but it
didn't explain how I would most wisely go about making my drop-down text
menu available in several different languages.

Say, to make the "File" menu and the "Edit" menu use different words
depending on the Locale setting, would I have to create a lengthy
if{}-else{} block to test for each Locale supported and return a
translated String for each word? If so, in my case with a lot of
text/words, this would be extremely cumbersome and the code would
probably triple in size. It might be less tedious if I were to maintain
multiple versions of the software (in each language). Am I missing
something?

Mark

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Bent C Dalager - 25 Jan 2008 17:02 GMT

>Say, to make the "File" menu and the "Edit" menu use different words
>depending on the Locale setting, would I have to create a lengthy
>if{}-else{} block to test for each Locale supported and return a
>translated String for each word?

No, you use resource bundles and possibly the MessageFormat class for
this.

See
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/ResourceBundle.html
and
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/text/MessageFormat.html

This way, your code may change from something like
button.setText("Apply");
to
button.setText(bundle.getString("button.apply"));

And you will have a Strings.properties file that would contain,
amongst other things,

button.apply = Apply

Then you might have one Strings_es_ES.properties file with Spanish
strings, etc.

Cheers,
Bent D

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Bent Dalager - bcd@pvv.org - http://www.pvv.org/~bcd
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Mark - 25 Jan 2008 18:23 GMT

> No, you use resource bundles and possibly the MessageFormat class for
> this.
[quoted text clipped - 16 lines]
> Then you might have one Strings_es_ES.properties file with Spanish
> strings, etc.

Awesome! Exactly what I was looking for! TY!

Mark

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Thomas A. Russ - 25 Jan 2008 20:07 GMT

> I was informed today that my Java program might be used in several other
> countries, including China, Romania, and some Spanish-speaking countries
> in South America.
>
> I haven't a clue what I should do to make my GUI internationalized. I
> am seeking guidance on this...

You should also look at what support is available for
internationalization in your particular IDE. For example, NetBeans has
tool support for internationalization. I haven't tried them, but that
may certainly help you in automatically setting up the proper
infrastructure for the internationalization of the text.

> Say, to make the "File" menu and the "Edit" menu use different words
> depending on the Locale setting, would I have to create a lengthy
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> multiple versions of the software (in each language). Am I missing
> something?

You use properties files as Bent Dalager suggested. It also makes it a
LOT easier to add additional languages, since only the property files
need to be handled by the translator, and not the entire code base.

This also helps in development, since it makes it simpler to change the
wording on buttons, prompts and message strings in response to user
feedback.

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Thomas A. Russ, USC/Information Sciences Institute

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Roedy Green - 27 Jan 2008 03:31 GMT

>I haven't a clue what I should do to make my GUI internationalized. I
>am seeking guidance on this...

see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/localisation.html

Signature

Roedy Green, Canadian Mind Products
The Java Glossary, http://mindprod.com

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Roedy Green - 27 Jan 2008 03:32 GMT

>I was informed today that my Java program might be used in several other
>countries, including China, Romania, and some Spanish-speaking countries
>in South America.

see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/resourcebundle.html

Signature

Roedy Green, Canadian Mind Products
The Java Glossary, http://mindprod.com

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