Why Aren't All My WinForm Controls and Forms Localizing?

Question

Greetings all,

I'm trying to localize a .NET/C# project. I'm using string resource files and setting the "Localizable" property on all my forms to 'True'. The assembly culture is empty. The resx/resource files are successfully passed through Lingobit, resgen, and al.

When running the localized executables, some of my forms are not localized (ones in which I know the Localizable flag is set) while others are. There are even a few forms which are localized but a button or two isn't. I cannot tell any difference between the non-localized forms/controls with the localized ones.

Anyone have an idea what I might be missing? Thanks!

Answer 1

When you open the form in Visual Studio, if you change the Language property of the Form to the language you are localizing to, does the same problem exist there? Could it be possible that the non-localized forms/buttons still have the English text set even in the localized resources?

Answer 2

Yeah, I'd go with Andy on this and be suspicious of the contents of the resource files. We dabbled with localisation for a time, and encountered a number of issues, but this certainly wasn't one of them.

If that isn't it, then how are you testing your app? If you haven't tried this already I'd suggest firing up a set of VMs with foreign language versions of Windows installed (rather than just changing the language settings on your machine) and seeing if that makes any difference.

Answer 3

Okay, I figured it out. You guys were correct. We were not generating the translated resx files correctly from Lingobit. Some of the files would get translated while others had the English text still in the resx.

Thanks for your help!

EDIT: Just to expand upon this, we specifically were messing up the al.exe command which takes the binary .resources file and creates a satellite assembly adding it to the executable's manifest. In the /embed command, you have to bind the resources file to a namespace. Our top-level name spaces were mapped correctly, but we weren't binding to sub-level namespaces on all of the resource files.