Internationalization (I18n)

Hi guys,

When you create a desktop application or a mobile app you can’t stick to the one language or else one language edition, obviously you can limit your app, but if you look at the commercial aspect that limitations directly impact your market. Today we have facilities to open our product to the world through different apps market like the Google apps market, Apple App store and so many different web platforms.  Usually if you want to introduce your product to world largest market like China, Russian you should adapt to their language. Otherwise, you can’t give a competition to your competitors. 

In this post I’ll explain how to internationalize your product. Internationalization can be categorized as a two different way,

What is the culture?

The International standard organization (ISO) introduces some standards to identify culture, according to countries in the world, as an example United State of America culture define as (en-US), culture definition formatted as a Language code – Country Code. 

Country code examples
 

Create globalized app using .Net frame work (C#)

Let’s create a small app which is display current date, But the thing is when we display current date, that date format is formatted according to your PC settings. But my target generates date according to user choice. I’ll provide user to 3 choices, ‘Sinhala’, ‘English’ & ‘French’. In order to do that I’ll provide a combo box to select language, three labels to named content. Here’s the draft interface of my app.

For the internationalization process, we must do some pre-steps. Above interface diagram labeled 3 ‘label fields’ as a label, label1 and label2. After that we can easily access thought the names which are assigned to the label fields. Another thing is, we need to import name space called, ‘Globalization’. After that we can do the internationalization process. According to this scenario, we need to customize the app allowing three different languages. I’ll explain how doing the internationalization process to the one language.

I explained the internationalization process can be divided into two sub categories, first one is globalization. Globalization, convert numbers, date time format & currency format according to specified culture. In our application label filed named ‘label’ represent a date. In order to convert date format. We need to pass the language code – country code as the current culture.

using System.Globalization;

System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = newSystem.Globalization.CultureInfo("si-LK"); // Sinhala - Sri Lankan format
label.Content = DateTime.Now.ToLongDateString(); 

The second category is localization, convert label fields, tool tips, text boxes according to specified culture called as the localization. In order to convert ‘label1’ and ‘label3’ according to specified language we need to define the resource file first.

In solution explore, go to the ‘proprieties’ and copy ‘Resource.resx’ file and paste it into the same folder. Then rename it as ‘Resource.si-LK.resx’. After that open the ‘Resource.si-LK.resx’ file, you can see the table separated into three columns as the ‘Name’, ‘Value’, ‘Comment’. Now you can fill the table according to your requirement. If you are needing to add another language simply add another Resource file and define according to previous steps. Here’s the table. 

Finally, we can assign the values which are defined in the ‘Resource.si-LK.resx’ to the labels. Please make sure when you define Resource file, define the by default values inside the ‘Resource.resx’ file. Previously we changed the Current culture in the application. Now we have changed the Current UI culture of the app. After that we can assign to the label contain using values which is define inside the resource file.  

System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("si-LK");
System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("si-LK");
label.Content = DateTime.Now.ToLongDateString();
label1.Content = WpfApplication4.Properties.Resources.day;
label3.Content = WpfApplication4.Properties.Resources.selectlanguage;

Source files/Code

Happy coding....

Regards,
Denuwan Himanga.