Internationalization

• Working with Unicode
• Making Applications Translation-Aware
• Dynamic Language Switching
• Translating Applications

In this chapter, we will cover how to write Qt applications in languages other than English and how to translate an existing Qt application to other languages.

The first section discusses Unicode, Qt's native character encoding. The information contained in this section is useful to all Qt developers, since even an application with an English user interface could one day be run on a Greek or Japanese user's machine.

The second section shows how to make applications translation-ready. This process is so easy that it's worth doing even if you don't have plans to offer translated versions of your software. It then leaves you in a good position to hire a translator and create a new market for your applications at a later date.

The third section is aimed at truly international applications and shows how to make an application change language on the fly.

The last section describes the translation process as a whole. It also shows how programmers and translators can work together using Qt Linguist and Qt's other translation tools.