Chapter 14. The Translator

IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING THAT THE TRANSLATOR or localizer plays a fundamental role in the internationalization process. Even if you use machine translation, a human will still be needed to review and fix the result of the machine's translation. Your translator/localizer could be a professional agency, a freelance translator, or, indeed, a bilingual, business-aware employee working in the same country as or a different country than the development team. Regardless, the role of the translator/localizer is critical, and the success of the internationalization of the project is dependent to some extent on how well this role is integrated into the development process. In this chapter, we explore strategies for including the translator/localizer in the development process and how to reintegrate this work with the project's source. Your options are dictated by whether your application is a Windows Forms application or an ASP.NET application, by whether it is a .NET Framework 1.1 application or a .NET Framework 2.0 application, and also by your perception of the translator/localizer's scope in the localization process.