Product Language Translation issues

[Fazi]

Hi,

I Have never worked on a windows other than english versions.
my software are only wiritten to work in english. i am not sure
how it behaves on other languages of windows.

Now i have planning to translate it to another language as well.
so i have orded a diffrent version of windows and it will take another 2-3 weeks to receive. until my questions is

Normally when transtating from one language (i.e. english) to another language (i.e. German / French) which areas are we have to modify. i.e. Installer language, program interface language, registry etc.

Please explain me the areas we need to change using your expericen.

Assume i am translating the english version of my program to German / french.

Thank you.

[jeroen79]

You should -at least- translate everything visible to the users.
After all, that is why you want to translate it.

For the rest, I would translate as much as I can spare time/effort/money for.
There is no reason NOT to translate something, other than time/effort/money.

You might think of a system to easily translate errormessages from language x to English in case they need to be sent to you for support.
Numerical error codes would be a good way.

[Fazi]

hai jeroen thanks for the post.

What about program registry changes? is registry key names and values are diffrent in each languages? if this is the case the registry queries written for english versions not work on other languages. am i correct? pls explain me about registry changes too.

thanks.

[jeroen79]

Whatever you want.

If you write to the registry in german then the application must read them in german.

Registry values usually aren't seen by the user so you might keep them in english.

In fact, I would not translate anything that is used internally by the application only and not seen by users or admin.
Internally the application should speak computerspeak.
Only when you are going to show something to a human should you use human language.

[Fazi]

Thanks jeroen.

Internally the application should speak computerspeak.

So it is not requir to make any changes to the registry part of the code since the applications have the ability to inernaly speak with each others registry. am i correct?

[jeroen79]

The registry is used to store settings for use of the application, not the user.
The user (usually) wouldn't look there so it wouldn't help him if you translated it.
It would only require you to further modify your program.

[Slaine]

I think Fazi is really asking if things like HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Windows et al are actually translated to the host OS language.

If this is the case then I can confirm that they are in English and no application changes are required.

[Fazi]

I think Fazi is really asking if things like HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Windows et al are actually translated to the host OS language.

If this is the case then I can confirm that they are in English and no application changes are required.

Yes Slaine. Yah. i am talking about HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Windows etc. As you confirmed if registry keys and values are really in english for any other languages then i dont want to warry about the registry codes. is it?

Thank you slaine.