An obvious approach to translation is to keep all the phrases used in an application in a huge lookup table of some kind. This is the approach adopted by the Microsoft Application Translator (see Appendix B, "Information Resources"). Of course, this solution doesn't help you with the actual translation process, but having found a lookup sourceor, more likely, having created one yourself (or with the help of a translator)you can save some effort on subsequent translations by keeping such words or phrases in a static lookup. Such glossaries exist. Microsoft's glossaries are at ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/developr/msdn/newup/Glossary/ (you can read these manually or use the inexpensive WinLexic (http://www.winlexic.com) to download, read, and search them in a more human interface). The Microsoft Application Translator (see Appendix B) also includes various lookup tables. However you should be aware of the following:
For these reasons, I have left this kind of translator as an exercise for the reader. |