What would be the easiest way to generate new localized resource files?

Question

Hi,

My windows forms application consists of one Visual Studio solution and several projects. The application is localized in English and French using resource files (each project has global resource files, e.g. fooResources.resx and fooResources.fr.resx, and each form/user control has its own resource files (e.g. fooForm.resx and fooForm.fr.resx) - so lets say for arguments sake I have about 30 sets of resource files.

I now have to extract all the strings to be sent for translation into German, then when I receive the translated strings create German resource files (e.g. fooResources.de.resx and fooForm.de.resx) which contain the new captions.

Obviously I could do all of this manually, but I am a developer and thus by nature lazy! No, just kidding - but I would appreciate some suggestions on the most painless way to do this as I am sure more languages will be coming in the future.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I've dealt with this a few different ways. I have worked with translators that are more than willing to work with .ResX files and will create the files as needed (though you may have to rename them to the proper locale code.

Otherwise, the contents of the resource files are purely XML. I wrote a little program that drops the xml data into a datagrid, and then imports the CSV or Excel file in using the key as a UID.