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Translating Team System Web Access to your langauge

We have gotten some requests for translations of Team System Web Access into additional languages (beyond the 9 we already do).  I am speculating that the additional interest here comes from the fact that TSWA targets a broader audience beyond the core development team and as such translations are even more valuable than for Visual Studio itself.

We aren't set up to create and test these translations, however, we would like to satisfy the demand.  Fortunately, translating TSWA is not a massive undertaking.  In all, it only involves translating a few hundred strings.  For our own localization effort, we have already separated these strings into separate .resx files that are compiled into satellite assemblies.  In short this means that if we give out the .resx files and a relatively short instructional document, it should be reasonably straight forward for you to localize TSWA into any language you choose.

I'd also like to make it possible for you to contribute your translations back to the community for others to use if you choose to do so.

Our thinking is that we will create a CodePlex project for TSWA translations.  We will upload all of the .resx files for the 9 languages we currently support and a document explaining how to create and install translations.  You can download the files, translate, build, install, test, and use them.  If you choose to contribute your translations back to the community, we will provide a way for you to request contributor rights to the CodePlex project and you will be able to upload your translation to CodePlex for others to download.

We're still working through the plans but this is the rough idea.  I expect it will take a few weeks to get this all set up - we're still working out the schedule so I'm not sure but I don't think it's going to take a long time.

I hope this will be helpful to you.  If you have any thoughts and/or comments, I'd love to hear them.  Keep an eye on my blog for further announcements as we get this ready.

Brian

Published Wednesday, May 28, 2008 10:10 AM by bharry

Comments

# re: Translating Team System Web Access to your langauge

Thursday, May 29, 2008 12:28 PM by Ramon Durães

I agree the translated version fully will be very interesting for the white public that to access WebAccess

# re: Translating Team System Web Access to your langauge

Thursday, May 29, 2008 5:19 PM by Jon Arild Tørresdal

Great idea! Wonder how long it will take before we'll see TSWA in Klingon?! :-)

I know this post is about TSWA and language files, but it got me thinking if this was something that MS should be doing for other apps as well? Even when the .resx files (or other types) is huge. The only reason I can think of for not doing this is that some might feel its being left to the community, which might send out the wrong signal. But I don’t REALLY believe that. As with TSWA it's already translated to many other languages and everybody know there can't be a version for every language out there. Giving the translation option to the end user is a good option I think.

From MS perspective it might be an issue with some more “public” applications where you can’t control the content (since it can be changed by anyone), and some might be tempted to exploit that. E.g. somebody publish language files in Norwegian and it turns out to be something else. However, I think the community has shown good self discipline over the years and issues like these has not been as common as some where initially afraid of.

# re: Translating Team System Web Access to your langauge

Friday, May 30, 2008 11:22 AM by bharry

I can't speak about too many other apps at MS but I can say that doing this for VS in the same way we are looking at it for Web Access isn't practical.  The degree of effort to localize VS is overwhelming.  And the level of difficulty to manage/build/install it is also dramatically greater.

That said, there actually is a somewhat similar program being run by the VS localization team for community localization.  I believe it is more involved and the loc team provides for guidance/assistance for the community localizers.

Brian

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