Re: Internationalization

Mark <Mark.Fenbers@xxxxxxxx> writes:

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
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?

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.

--
Thomas A. Russ, USC/Information Sciences Institute
.

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