Localization Question - Level of Effort

[Corey B]

I have an ASP.NET application that was built in ASP.NET v1.1. It has a
SQL Server back end database. I have been asked to provide an estimate
for the level of effort required to produce a Chinese version of the
application.

I have read a bit about localization in .NET. However I have no
experience with actually implementing localization. Can anyone out
there provide some sort of idea as to how difficult or easy this may
be? It seems like I would have to go through each page and modify it
so that it will work with a resource file - one for English and one for
Chinese. And I would also probably need to modify my database to
support multiple languages. For example, if the database contains a
list of items for a drop down list, then that data needs to be saved in
the database in two different languages.

Any advice or guesses as to how difficult this might be would be
helpful.

Thanks,
Corey

 

[David Thielen]

Having done this a lot and having no idea how complex the site is, I
can give you these rules of thumb.

1) Localization in .NET 1.1 is a giant PITA. You have to change the
..aspx files by hand. (2.0 is a moderate PITA - much better).

2) It is a lot more work than you think. You are going to trip over
item after item as you do your first localization. The second one is a
lot faster.

I have an ASP.NET application that was built in ASP.NET v1.1. It has a
SQL Server back end database. I have been asked to provide an estimate
for the level of effort required to produce a Chinese version of the
application.

I have read a bit about localization in .NET. However I have no
experience with actually implementing localization. Can anyone out
there provide some sort of idea as to how difficult or easy this may
be? It seems like I would have to go through each page and modify it
so that it will work with a resource file - one for English and one for
Chinese. And I would also probably need to modify my database to
support multiple languages. For example, if the database contains a
list of items for a drop down list, then that data needs to be saved in
the database in two different languages.

Any advice or guesses as to how difficult this might be would be
helpful.

Thanks,
Corey

david@[email protected]
Windward Reports -- http://www.WindwardReports.com
me -- http://dave.thielen.com

Cubicle Wars - http://www.windwardreports.com/film.htm

 

[Brian Williams]

It's hard to say... I think that really depends on how you architected your
solution. It looks like Microsoft has done allot of changes sense I last
used it on .Net 1.1

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms379546(VS.80).aspx

I can offer a suggestion, when you change your text over to display from
resource files. I suggest that you prefix all text in your UI elements with
a special character such as *. This way if you see the prefix, you will know
it's not pulling the data from the resource file.


Regards,
Brian K. Williams

 

[Corey B]

David,

Thanks so much for the input. I know how hard it is to give an answer
on these message boards without having any information at all about my
site. My guess was also that is a giant PITA!! Are these the steps
roughly?

1. Translate all static text on all pages to Chinese
2. Modify all ASPX pages to use resource files for English and Chinese
3. Create RESX files for English and Chinese for all ASPX pages
4. Create new image files in Chinese.
5. Modify database to hold multiple language versions of all text data.
Also modify all code to pull correct language version from database.

My other big question has to do with multiple language support in
Windows itself I guess. I have never worked with an installation of
Windows in another language. If I was able to get the static content
for a page translated in to Chinese, then how the heck would I put that
in RESX file? Would I have to have a computer that has a Chinese
installation of Windows? Would I use a special keyboard? How would I
do a Russian version?

Thanks again for your input.

Corey