Self-translation on a .Net MVC website to support localisation

Question

Hi,

We're a startup and we built a .net website which we are porting over to MVC. All our text was added to the site using labels so that resource files could be automatically built in the future using the tool in Visual Studio.

I loved the idea which Facebook introduced encouraging the community to self-translate. I wonder if anyone has tried implementing such a thing in the .Net world? The interface would have to be rich and easy to use, but I guess any complexity would be in the auditing and possibly writing to the resource file for that locale. I have no idea if the latter is possible.

Any thoughts then give me a shout. Perhaps this could be an open source project in itself.

Answer 1

Rick Strahl over on www.west-wind.com has a Data Driven Localization Resource Provider but I am pretty sure it is webform related. It allows users to edit and save translation texts in a browser while using the application.

Answer 2

The question i would then ask is how do you check the translations to ensure they are correct and make sense.

A classic example is in the UK in Wales road signs need to be in English and Welsh. A sign was needed saying "HGV's please take this route" (or similar) So the English was sent to the translators and the reply duly came back and the sign was made up and put up in the road. Welsh speaking driver were most surprised to se a sign which said "HGV's please take this route" in English and in Welsh it said (obviously i have translated it back) "We are all on holiday please contact us again after the 10th November".

Translation is not really about the tecnology, it's about the languages.