Localizing resources in a Silverlight Business Application

As a speaker of a foreign language and a former software tester for many localization projects, I have a continued interest in how to globalize and localize my applications. Fortunately, it has gotten much easier through the years as operating systems have become more accommodating to things like DBCS and bidirectional support. .NET has also continued to improve by adding better resource integration support and fortunately Silverlight is no exception in using this functionality.

Unlike with 3.0, Silverlight 4.0 provides a “ResourceWrapper.cs” class by default which encapsulates your resource references and binds the navigation elements out of the box. With only a few extra steps, you can fully globalize an application which will allow you to easily switch between languages on the fly.

Instructions
1. Open Visual Studio and create a “Silverlight Business Application.” (Note: If you are creating any other type of Silverlight application, I recommend seeing Tim Heuer’s blog entry mentioned below.)
2. Update the project file to support multiple languages.
i. Save the application and close Visual Studio.
ii. Open the Silverlight csproj file in notepad.
iii. Add as many culture names as will be supported. (See below for complete list.)
<SupportedCultures>en-US,ja-JP</SupportedCultures>
iv. Reopen the project in Visual Studio.
3. Add additional resource files for each culture name that you support.
i. Under the Assets –> Resources folder, copy and paste the ApplicationStrings.resx file and rename it using the appropriate culture name. For example, ApplicationStrings.ja-jp.resx would be used for Japanese.
ii. Double click on the resx file and ensure that the “No code generated” is picked for the Access Modifier. You can also delete the corresponding code behind file.
ii. Update the resource file with localized strings. In the following example, I have added a resource for Japanese and translated a few items.

iv. VERY IMPORTANT: If you add additional strings to your resource files, you will need to go into the original ApplicationStrings.Designer.cs file and ensure that the constructor is set to “public”. There is a bug in Visual Studio that changes it to “internal”. As of Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2, this is still a problem.


v. Binding is done in xaml with the following example.

Content="{BindingPath=ApplicationStrings.MyNewString, Source={StaticResource ResourceWrapper}}"

4. Update the ResourceWrapper.cs file to implement the INotifyPropertyChanged interface.

using System.ComponentModel;
public sealed classResourceWrapper : INotifyPropertyChanged
{
private staticApplicationStrings applicationStrings = new ApplicationStrings();
private static SecurityQuestions securityQuestions = new SecurityQuestions();

public ApplicationStrings ApplicationStrings
{
get { return applicationStrings; }
set { OnPropertyChanged("ApplicationStrings"); }
}

public SecurityQuestions SecurityQuestions
{
get { return securityQuestions; }
set { OnPropertyChanged("SecurityQuestions"); }
}

public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;

private void OnPropertyChanged(string propertyName)
{
if (PropertyChanged != null)
{
PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName));
}
}
}

5. Add a UI element for changing languages. In this example, I us a ComboBox.
i. Copy and paste the following code in the MainPage.xaml file after the “About” button.

   <ComboBox Name="Language" SelectionChanged="Language_SelectionChanged">
      <ComboBoxItem Content="English" Tag="en-US" IsSelected="True" />
      <ComboBoxItem Content="日本語" Tag="ja-JP" />
</ComboBox>

 ii.  Add the following code behind.

private void Language_SelectionChanged(object sender, SelectionChangedEventArgs e)
{
 Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture =
     new CultureInfo(((ComboBoxItem)((ComboBox)sender).SelectedItem).Tag.ToString());
 Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture =
     new CultureInfo(((ComboBoxItem)((ComboBox)sender).SelectedItem).Tag.ToString());
 ((ResourceWrapper)App.Current.Resources["ResourceWrapper"]).ApplicationStrings =
     new ApplicationStrings();
}

Run your application…

References
Tim Heuer - Silverlight and localizing string data - Although Tim’s example is for 3.0, I used it quite liberally in this post.  I give Tim full credit for helping me understand how localization works in Silverlight.

Table of Language Culture Names, Codes, and ISO Values Method [C++]

Display Name	Culture Name
Afrikaans - South Africa	af-ZA
Albanian - Albania	sq-AL
Arabic - Algeria	ar-DZ
Arabic - Bahrain	ar-BH
Arabic - Egypt	ar-EG
Arabic - Iraq	ar-IQ
Arabic - Jordan	ar-JO
Arabic - Kuwait	ar-KW
Arabic - Lebanon	ar-LB
Arabic - Libya	ar-LY
Arabic - Morocco	ar-MA
Arabic - Oman	ar-OM
Arabic - Qatar	ar-QA
Arabic - Saudi Arabia	ar-SA
Arabic - Syria	ar-SY
Arabic - Tunisia	ar-TN
Arabic - United Arab Emirates	ar-AE
Arabic - Yemen	ar-YE
Armenian - Armenia	hy-AM
Azeri (Cyrillic) - Azerbaijan	Cy-az-AZ
Azeri (Latin) - Azerbaijan	Lt-az-AZ
Basque - Basque	eu-ES
Belarusian - Belarus	be-BY
Bulgarian - Bulgaria	bg-BG
Catalan - Catalan	ca-ES
Chinese - China	zh-CN
Chinese - Hong Kong SAR	zh-HK
Chinese - Macau SAR	zh-MO
Chinese - Singapore	zh-SG
Chinese - Taiwan	zh-TW
Chinese (Simplified)	zh-CHS
Chinese (Traditional)	zh-CHT
Croatian - Croatia	hr-HR
Czech - Czech Republic	cs-CZ
Danish - Denmark	da-DK
Dhivehi - Maldives	div-MV
Dutch - Belgium	nl-BE
Dutch - The Netherlands	nl-NL
English - Australia	en-AU
English - Belize	en-BZ
English - Canada	en-CA
English - Caribbean	en-CB
English - Ireland	en-IE
English - Jamaica	en-JM
English - New Zealand	en-NZ
English - Philippines	en-PH
English - South Africa	en-ZA
English - Trinidad and Tobago	en-TT
English - United Kingdom	en-GB
English - United States	en-US
English - Zimbabwe	en-ZW
Estonian - Estonia	et-EE
Faroese - Faroe Islands	fo-FO
Farsi - Iran	fa-IR
Finnish - Finland	fi-FI
French - Belgium	fr-BE
French - Canada	fr-CA
French - France	fr-FR
French - Luxembourg	fr-LU
French - Monaco	fr-MC
French - Switzerland	fr-CH
Galician - Galician	gl-ES
Georgian - Georgia	ka-GE
German - Austria	de-AT
German - Germany	de-DE
German - Liechtenstein	de-LI
German - Luxembourg	de-LU
German - Switzerland	de-CH
Greek - Greece	el-GR
Gujarati - India	gu-IN
Hebrew - Israel	he-IL
Hindi - India	hi-IN
Hungarian - Hungary	hu-HU
Icelandic - Iceland	is-IS
Indonesian - Indonesia	id-ID
Italian - Italy	it-IT
Italian - Switzerland	it-CH
Japanese - Japan	ja-JP
Kannada - India	kn-IN
Kazakh - Kazakhstan	kk-KZ
Konkani - India	kok-IN
Korean - Korea	ko-KR
Kyrgyz - Kazakhstan	ky-KZ
Latvian - Latvia	lv-LV
Lithuanian - Lithuania	lt-LT
Macedonian (FYROM)	mk-MK
Malay - Brunei	ms-BN
Malay - Malaysia	ms-MY
Marathi - India	mr-IN
Mongolian - Mongolia	mn-MN
Norwegian (Bokmål) - Norway	nb-NO
Norwegian (Nynorsk) - Norway	nn-NO
Polish - Poland	pl-PL
Portuguese - Brazil	pt-BR
Portuguese - Portugal	pt-PT
Punjabi - India	pa-IN
Romanian - Romania	ro-RO
Russian - Russia	ru-RU
Sanskrit - India	sa-IN
Serbian (Cyrillic) - Serbia	Cy-sr-SP
Serbian (Latin) - Serbia	Lt-sr-SP
Slovak - Slovakia	sk-SK
Slovenian - Slovenia	sl-SI
Spanish - Argentina	es-AR
Spanish - Bolivia	es-BO
Spanish - Chile	es-CL
Spanish - Colombia	es-CO
Spanish - Costa Rica	es-CR
Spanish - Dominican Republic	es-DO
Spanish - Ecuador	es-EC
Spanish - El Salvador	es-SV
Spanish - Guatemala	es-GT
Spanish - Honduras	es-HN
Spanish - Mexico	es-MX
Spanish - Nicaragua	es-NI
Spanish - Panama	es-PA
Spanish - Paraguay	es-PY
Spanish - Peru	es-PE
Spanish - Puerto Rico	es-PR
Spanish - Spain	es-ES
Spanish - Uruguay	es-UY
Spanish - Venezuela	es-VE
Swahili - Kenya	sw-KE
Swedish - Finland	sv-FI
Swedish - Sweden	sv-SE
Syriac - Syria	syr-SY
Tamil - India	ta-IN
Tatar - Russia	tt-RU
Telugu - India	te-IN
Thai - Thailand	th-TH
Turkish - Turkey	tr-TR
Ukrainian - Ukraine	uk-UA
Urdu - Pakistan	ur-PK
Uzbek (Cyrillic) - Uzbekistan	Cy-uz-UZ
Uzbek (Latin) - Uzbekistan	Lt-uz-UZ
Vietnamese - Vietnam	vi-VN