> Richard Gaskin wrote:
> More importantly, this may be a healthy wake-up call for all of us:
>
> There are other cultures out there,
> and not all of them speak English.
> How many of you are getting requests for localized versions of your
> MC/Rev-based software? How do you approach localization with a tool like
> MetaCard where we commonly embed user feedback directly in the code (the ask
> and answer commands for example)?
I got my wakeup call recently. I created a large educational project
without ever having the faintest thought about anyone in another country or
speaking another language using it. After I posted my software for
download, it was very entertaining to count how many different countries
there were in the download record. Then a prof in Brazil asked if I would
incorporate his translation of all the text in my project into Portuguese.
It was easy to say "sure." I was astounded to go to the web and find that
there are 50 universities in Brazil with chemical engineering departments. I
started hoping someone would volunteer to do a Spanish translation.
Then I got the Portuguese translation in a big Word document. Turns out
translation is the easy part (ignoring the effort of learning a second
language). The hard part is that now I am committed to - and am in the
middle of - replacing many hundreds of strings in hundreds of objects.
So I learned: Whenever I start any new project, I am going to design the
project to make translation and language localization easy.
Jacqueline suggested putting text in the custom properties of each object,
answer text in the custom props of a button, for example. Adding a new
language then would mean accessing all the individual objects. Maybe put
the text strings at the stack (or higher level), e.g., in a custom property
set of the stack whose keys are formed from the name of the object using the
string plus a string number (or other identifier) for objects using multiple
strings...
Rich Herz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
Please send bug reports to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, not this list.
