In the article “Develop your app for everyone–localize your UI”, Tim Heuer shows how to localize the language of a Windows 8 .NET App along with various tools that can help in the process.
Following are a few of the main points from the article -
- New Resource model in WinRT with Windows.ApplicationModel.Resources and Windows.ApplicationModel.Resources.Core (this applies to both HTML+JavaScript and XAML+.NET)
- No need to do data binding of Resource generated class to XAML elements – x:Uid attribute of the XAML element maps to the key in your ResW file
And Tools you can use -
- RESX translator with Bing to translate your ResW files to different languages
- Multilingual App Toolkit for VS 11 Beta – again to manage your Resource files and translate them using Bing
- Amanuens – a service where a translator will translate these files for you
Obviously, globalization goes beyond language localizations and also involves currency, units of measurements, data formats (e.g. address, names) and more. If your Windows 8 App is built on .NET, you can use the capabilities provided by the System.Globalization namespace for some of these aspects. Microsoft’s Go Global Development centre contains a lot of resources regarding globalizing a .NET app, the article-series “Globalization Step-By-Step” being a good starting point.
