Translating Your Application

The most important step in the localization process is the translation of the strings/messages and to make UMG and SMG files.

The following example assumes that we are going to translate your application from English into Dutch. The overall procedure of the localization is as follows:

1.	Define the languages into which your application will be translated.

From the menu bar, choose Tools, Language, System Languages. Define "DUT" for Dutch.

From the menu bar, choose Tools, Language, Populate Used Application Strings, and then click OK.

USoft Developer extracts all the text strings of your application from your application repository, and loads them into T_APP_USED_STR table.

This can be carried out in the Binder. Click on the Definer icon and from the menu bar, choose Item, Load System Messages.

USoft Developer extracts all the system messages from your application flat files (including the system messages borrowed from the USoft Developer and the user-defined system messages for the application), and loads them into the T_SYS_MSG table.

Enter translations for the application strings in the T_APP_LNG_STR table (a child table of T_APP_USED_STR table), and the translations for the system messages in the T_SYS_MSG_LNG table (a child table of T_SYS_MSG table). See "How to Translate Application Strings" and "How to Translate System Messages" for more information.

From the menu bar, choose Tools, Create Flat Files, to generate flat files for your translated application strings, and translated system messages, respectively.

These files must have the name of the application as their file name, with UMG and SMG extensions for the application strings and system messages respectively.

You can translate an application into more than one language. In this case, all of the translations are merged into the same flat file. You can specify in the Binder which language you want the application to run in (for a particular project/user).

There is a small collection of strings that cannot be translated because they are part of the operating system. These strings are the texts on the OK, Yes, No, Cancel buttons on question messages. When running a different language version of the Windows operating system(s), these strings are translated automatically.