History: MultiLangVsNet

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Multi-Language for Visual Studio

See also
Major Features

Quick Tour (Windows Forms)
Quick Tour (ASP.NET 2.0)
Quick Tour (Windows Store Apps)
Quick Tour (Unmanaged C++/MFC)
What's New

Download
Installing Multi-Language
Removing Multi-Language
End User License Agreement

General Description

Multi-Language for Visual Studio provides extended support for creating localized applications using Microsoft Visual Studio. The supported application types are
  • Windows Forms
  • Windows Store Apps
  • WPF
  • Silverlight
  • ASP.NET 2.0
  • Compact Framework
  • MFC (unmanaged C++)

The product is implemented as a Visual Studio Package, which means that it is tightly integrated into the development environment itself. The localization support is based on the built in localization support in Visual Studio and in the .NET environment.

The basic steps involved in localizing an application are:

Identifying the strings to be translated

Multi-Language scans your project, looking for strings defined in

The properties of controlsFor .NET controls, the properties which can be translated are marked with the Localizable attribute. Multi-Language shows all string properties with the Localizable attribute.

For ASP.NET projects, it also shows static text from the HTML code.

For MFC projects (unmanaged C++) Multi-Language shows the texts in dialog and menu resources defined in the resource script (.rc) file.
The program source codeMulti-Language shows all texts detected in the source code.

In both cases, you can

  • select the texts which you wish to translate
  • hide texts which you do not wish to translate
Note
Most programs contain a lot of text strings which do not require translation. In many cases, translating a string will actually cause a program error. Selecting the texts which require translation is a job which can only be performed by the programmer.

Multi-Language for Visual Studio makes it easy to start this job late in project development.

Specifying the languages to be supported

Multi-Language shows you a list of all languages supported by Windows. Simply select a language from the list to add it to the project.

For each language, an additional column is added to the grids, showing the strings for this language.

Entering translations

There are two basic ways to enter translations. The one you choose probably depends on who is going to do the translation work.

Enter translations directlyThe simplest way to enter a translation is to type it into the grid.

When you click in a cell, Multi-Language will immediately show the location of the text in the source code, or in a designer window. This makes it easy to identify where and how the text is used.

Multi-Language contains a database of common translations, so terms such as OK and Cancel will usually be translated automatically.

Multi-Language also contains a translation memory feature, which shows you translations of other texts containing the same words.

This is the best approach, if the programmer is able to translate the texts herself or himself.
Enter translations with Microsoft Excel or OpenOfficeIn most cases, you will need to send the texts to a translator.

In this case, you can
- export the texts to a spreadsheet file
- have the texts translated in the spreadsheet
- import the translated texts back into the project from the spreadsheet

Storing translations and adding runtime support

After entering translations using Multi-Language, the texts are exported to resource files in the .ResX format, used by Visual Studio. The standard localization support in the .NET runtime environment will load the localized texts for the default system language.

Using Multi-Language you can add additional support for

  • selecting the language from a list when the program is started
  • changing the language when the program is running


For unmanaged C++ projects, Multi-Language exports translations to the resource script (.rc) file in three steps:

  • all texts are exported to string table resources
  • the texts in existing dialog and menu resources are updated
  • if necessary, new dialog and menu resources are generated for individual languages.

Versions

Multi-Language for Visual Studio is now implemented as a Visual Studio package.
A single VSIX installation file supports Visual Studio 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2015.

Older versions are still available for Visual Studio 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2008. These versions are implemented as Visual Studio Add-In.
These versions are no longer in development.

See also

Major Features
Quick Tour (Windows Forms)
Quick Tour (ASP.NET 2.0)
Quick Tour (Unmanaged C++/MFC)
What's New
Download
Image



History

Information Version
Thu 13 of May, 2021 21:24 GMT Phil 47
Thu 13 of May, 2021 21:22 GMT Phil 46
Sat 04 of Jul, 2020 11:52 GMT admin 45
Sun 04 of Dec, 2016 17:06 GMT Phil 44
Sun 04 of Oct, 2015 11:03 GMT Phil 43
Sat 04 of Apr, 2015 18:48 GMT Phil 42
Sat 04 of Apr, 2015 18:46 GMT Phil 41
Sat 24 of Jan, 2015 17:48 GMT Phil 40
Tue 06 of Jan, 2015 20:17 GMT Phil 39
Wed 19 of Sep, 2012 21:45 GMT Phil 38
Sat 04 of Feb, 2012 17:03 GMT Phil 37
Tue 05 of Jan, 2010 13:52 GMT Phil 36
Tue 22 of Sep, 2009 21:42 GMT Phil 35
Sat 04 of Jul, 2009 22:53 GMT Phil 34
Sat 17 of Jan, 2009 21:42 GMT admin 33
Sat 17 of Jan, 2009 21:33 GMT Phil 32
Sat 17 of Jan, 2009 13:29 GMT Phil 31
Sat 17 of Jan, 2009 13:17 GMT Phil 30
Thu 15 of Jan, 2009 23:31 GMT Phil 29
Wed 24 of Dec, 2008 23:11 GMT Phil 28
Sun 07 of Dec, 2008 12:37 GMT Phil 27
Sat 29 of Nov, 2008 17:56 GMT Sabine 26
Wed 23 of Jan, 2008 23:24 GMT admin 25
Wed 23 of Jan, 2008 23:14 GMT admin 24
Mon 21 of Jan, 2008 22:38 GMT admin 23
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