Temporary displaying text (not dates) in a different language

Question

I'm trying to display some message on the screen in a different language (but keeping the dates in the default language, uk_eng), depending on what user is looking at the screen. Being only a temporary setting I was wondering what's the best way to do it in Java.

Answer 1

You could have message bundles for each Locale. Load these and display them appropriately when you identify the user's Locale.

An example is at http://java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/Programming/BasicJava2/int.html

You could load these in a web app too like http://www.devsphere.com/mapping/docs/guide/internat.html

Answer 2

If I see the problem well, you want to display messages with MessageFormat like this:

 Object[] arguments = {
     new Integer(7),
     new Date(System.currentTimeMillis()),
     "a disturbance in the Force"
 };

String result = MessageFormat.format(
         "At {1,time} on {1,date}, there was {2} on planet {0,number,integer}.",
         arguments);

(Example from javadoc)

I checked the source of the MessageFormat and I see that getLocale() is common for the whole message. You cannot make a distinct one for a parameter.

Why don't you make a parameter with the formatted date string itself? Like this:

 Object[] arguments = {
     new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyy.MMMMM.dd GGG hh:mm aaa", Locale.UK).format(new Date())
 };

String result = MessageFormat.format(
         "This is the date format which I always want independently of the locale: {1} ",
         arguments);

The first parameter of the format methods may come from localized property files.