Commerce Server General - Translating my site

Author

Translating my site

Tomas Vera

2004-04-22, 6:38 pm

Hello All,
I've been tasked with getting our website translated into the languages
supported by the product we sell (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and
Japanese).

I've not come across any translation tools built into Commerce Server (did I
just overlook something?).

I know that .NET has some language capability that can be accessed
programmatically, using the ResourceManager object. But when I experimented with
this feature, my '$' were being translated into foreign currency symbols, along
with my text strings, and some of the dates being generated by some pages were
not compatible with what the database was expecting (I think I've since solved
the date issue, though).

Can anyone give me ideas on how you've translated your site for foreign users?

So far, my thoughts are to create a master trasnlation table which contains
StringID's and six versions of the string per row (a column for English, a
column for French, etc).

The design-time version of the control would hold the ID of the string to
retrieve at run time. During the PageLoad event, I would simply check the user's
profile for a preferred language, and load the string from the appropriate
column in the appropriate row.

But I don't know if this would be unworkable in a production environment.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

-tomas

Caesar Samsi[MSFT]

2004-05-20, 5:42 pm

Hi Tomas, Commerce Server 2002 product provides multi-lingual capabilities.
The topic of creating an International is well covered in its documentation.

The catalog allows entry of multiple language descriptions, currencies, etc.
We don't translate the language text itself, i.e. if you put in "Red Apple"
in a product description, we don't auto translate to "Apple Rouge" in French
(or however Apple is written in French).

You will need to put in both product descriptions "Red Apple" in English,
and "Apple Rouge" in French. Then depending on the language that is selected
for the site, the catalog system displays the appropriate language text.

Thanks, Caesar.

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"Tomas Vera" <tavera@NOxSPAMsbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:30hg80d1l9il5gcmuk7c7ne89uuoqg6sln@
4ax.com...
> Hello All,
> I've been tasked with getting our website translated into the languages
> supported by the product we sell (English, French, German, Spanish,
Italian and
> Japanese).
>
> I've not come across any translation tools built into Commerce Server (did
I
> just overlook something?).
>
> I know that .NET has some language capability that can be accessed
> programmatically, using the ResourceManager object. But when I
experimented with
> this feature, my '$' were being translated into foreign currency symbols,
along
> with my text strings, and some of the dates being generated by some pages
were
> not compatible with what the database was expecting (I think I've since
solved
> the date issue, though).
>
> Can anyone give me ideas on how you've translated your site for foreign
users?
>
> So far, my thoughts are to create a master trasnlation table which
contains
> StringID's and six versions of the string per row (a column for English, a
> column for French, etc).
>
> The design-time version of the control would hold the ID of the string to
> retrieve at run time. During the PageLoad event, I would simply check the
user's
> profile for a preferred language, and load the string from the appropriate
> column in the appropriate row.
>
> But I don't know if this would be unworkable in a production environment.
>
> Any ideas would be appreciated.
>
> -tomas