Question

So we are sure that we will be taking our product internationally and will eventually need to internationalize it. How much internationalizing would you recommend we do as we go along?

I guess in other words, is there any internationalization that is easy now but can be much worse if we let the code base mature and that won’t slow us down very much if we choose to start doing it now?

Tech used: C#, WPF, WinForms

Answer 1

Prepare it now, before you write all the strings in the codebase itself.

Everything after now will be too late. It’s now or never!

It’s true that it is a bit of extra effort to prepare well now, but not doing it will end up being a lot more expensive.

If you won’t follow all the guidelines in the links below, at least heed points 1,2 and 7 of the summary which are very cheap to do now and which cause the most pain afterwards in my experience.

Check these guidelines and see for yourself why it’s better to start now and get everything prepared.

1. Developing world ready applications

2. Best practices for developing world ready applications

Little extract:

1. Move all localizable resources to separate resource-only DLLs. Localizable resources include user interface elements such as strings, error messages, dialog boxes, menus, and embedded object resources. (Moving the resources to a DLL afterwards will be a pain)
2. Do not hardcode strings or user interface resources. (If you don’t prepare, you know you will hardcode strings)
3. Do not put nonlocalizable resources into the resource-only DLLs. This causes confusion for translators.
4. Do not use composite strings that are built at run time from concatenated phrases. Composite strings are difficult to localize because they often assume an English grammatical order that does not apply to all languages. (After the interface design, changing phrases gets harder)
5. Avoid ambiguous constructs such as ‘Empty Folder’ where the strings can be translated differently depending on the grammatical roles of the strings’ components. For example, ’empty’ can be either a verb or an adjective, and this can lead to different translations in languages such as Italian or French. (Same issue)
6. Avoid using images and icons that contain text in your application. They are expensive to localize. (Use text rendered over the image)
7. Allow plenty of room for the length of strings to expand in the user interface. In some languages, phrases can require 50-75 percent more space. (Same issue, if you don’t plan for it now, redesign is more expensive)
8. Use the System.Resources.ResourceManager class to retrieve resources based on culture.
9. Use Microsoft Visual Studio .NET to create Windows Forms dialog boxes, so they can be localized using the Windows Forms Resource Editor (Winres.exe). Do not code Windows Forms dialog boxes by hand.