SHIP:Language and Translation Management (Version 5)

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SHIPTide V5 includes significant new management capabilities for multi-language resources, including:

  • Import/Export of all your resources from/to Microsoft Excel
  • Table-style editing
  • Default language management
  • Language list management

SHIPTide Language Elements

In SHIPTide, the various language elements are:

Where to find Language Elements
  1. the Resources area
  2. the set of Text resources
  3. individual text and/or string resources
  4. selects the currently displayed language
  5. launches the Language and Translations manager

The Language and Translations Manager

Pressing the language manager button launches a pop-up dialog language and translations manager something like this:

The Language and Translations Manager

The manager has two areas: the upper area (1) is the list of available languages, and the bottom area (2) shows all the translatable resources and enables Microsoft Excel import/export.

The Language List

The upper area (1) shows the list of languages you want to accommodate in your GUI. Here you can add, remove, and set the default language. The default language means that if a translation does not exist for a given string resources the default language translation will be used.

Pressing the "add" button allows you to add a new 4-letter language code and to (optionally) give this language a more readable name:

Adding a Language

In the example above, we're adding Portuguese (pt) as used in Brazil (BR), and giving it the more readable name of "PortugueseSA" to remind us it is Portuguese as used in South America. Pressing OK yields a new language list in the language manager:

After adding ptBR

Highlighting this new language and pressing "Remove" will remove that language, including all translations for all resources in that language.

Removing ptBR

Selecting any language in the list and pressing "Set Default" will make that language the default GUI language.

Import/Export

The lower area (2) lists in a table format all the various text/string resources in your project, including their various translations. Depending on the version of SHIPTide, you may or may not be able to edit this table directly. This lower area allows you to export all these resources to a Microsoft Excel file (.xls) and re-import that file post-translation back into your project.

Pressing the "Export" button brings up a standard file browser prompting you to tell SHIPTide where to export all these translation resources to. This will be a standard, UTF-8 encoded, Microsoft Excel ".xlsx" file.

The .xslx file can be sent to your translator(s) who can edit this file, adding the various translations into the fields. When complete, you can then import this back into your project and all the various listed text/string resources will be updated.

The Excel file looks like this:

Example Translation Resource Export to Excel File

Do not change the format or layout of this spreadsheet or you will not be able to import it back into SHIPTide. The column with the strange characters/numbers must be preserved and absolutely unchanged -- these are unique IDs mapped to the resources in your project. You can change the name property of the resource in SHIPTide but that underlying unique ID does not change.

You can, however, add new lines to the spreadsheet. Leave the ID field blank. When you import into SHIPTide, those will be created as new resources for you. This may be the fastest way to import your first set of resources: export a minimal or empty set of resources, add all the resources as new lines/entries, then import the result back into SHIPTide.