I'm making a Translator, but i need help on this part

Okay in this program there's a translating part. Sounds pretty simple huh? well this won't work for some reason, and i want you to see what's wrong...

I'm getting it to find each word as it goes along, and i've only had one word put in so far just to test it out, Je ("I" in french)

VB Code:

Dim Length As Integer
    Dim x As Integer
    Dim y As Integer
    Dim word As String
    Dim sentence As String
    Dim xa As String
    Dim ya As String
 
    Private Sub Button1_Click(............) Handles Button1.Click
        sentence = ""
        Length = Len(TextBox1.Text)
        For x = 1 To Length
            xa = Mid(TextBox1.Text, 1, x)
            If xa = " " Then
                For y = 1 To x Step -1
                    ya = Mid(TextBox1.Text, x, 1)
                    If ya = " " Then
                        word = Mid(TextBox1.Text, y + 1, x - 1)
                        If word = " Je " Then
                            sentence = sentence + " I "
                            TextBox2.Text = sentence
                        End If
                    End If
                Next
            End If
        Next
    End Sub
 
End Class

why not do it using regular expressions

here is a demo for your je it uses 2 textboxes the first is the input the second displays the translation and a button fires the whole thing off

the reg expression is very very basic but you can build them to be ultra clever

here is the demo

VB Code:

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
        TextBox2.Text = translator(TextBox1.Text)
    End Sub
 
    Private Function translator(ByVal str As String) As String
        Dim regex As New System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("je\s")
        Return regex.Replace(str, "I ")
    End Function

oh thanks it's really hard transitioning to vb.NET

now how do i do more then one word?

Dim regex As New System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("Je")
Return regex.Replace(str, "I ")
Dim regex As New System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("Tu")
Return regex.Replace(str, "You ")

doesn't work... because i'm declaring it twice, i've never used reg expression before

You need to modify the regular expression that is used

I would suggest you will need a database that looks something along the lines of this

primary key, English Word, French Word, context

then you could loop depending on the translation eg french to english you query the db loop through each row inserting the french word in the regular expression and placing the english word in the replace string

this of coarse only gives you literal translations and not a true translation. as langauges are not the easiest things to work with. It would also take some length of time if you created a decent db with every word in the english dictionary with its french equivalent. Even using regex which is very quick the database looping would cause a considerable delay

for a quick demo of how to do more than one word you could try this approach

VB Code:

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
dim stringArray() as string = textbox1.text.split(" ")
dim intLoop as integer
dim NewString as string = textbox1.text 
for intLoop = 0 to stringArray.length - 1       
newstring  = translator(newstring,stringArray(intLoop),GetReplaceMentWord(stringArray(intLoop)))
Next intloop
textBox2.text = newstring 
    End Sub
 
    Private Function translator(ByVal str As String, byval strSearchWord as string, byVal strReplaceWord as string) As String
        Dim regex As New System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex(strsearchword & "\s")
        Return regex.Replace(str, strReplaceWord)
    End Function
 
 
Private Function GetReplaceMentWord(byval strWord as string ) as string
'put your code here to find the correct translated word for the replace function
End Function

why use the regular expression instead of the string class replace function you may ask?

Well the reason being that you can dynamically get the regular expression to sort for plural values eg "car" "cars" "car's" and all that sort of thing if you build it correctly regular expressions can be emmensly powerful when applied with a bit of thought.

Anyway I hope this helps you out.