Localization: Best practice suggestions Apps with mixed UI and Content languages?

Question

I am trying to write a simple Universal app that can be easily localized to different UI languages. But the app also needs to display content that is determined by user settings. For example I would like the app UI to display in the users region (English, Russian, etc.) while at the same time having fields on the page whose strings are coming from other resources (Latin "la"? , Spanish, etc.).

The samples are pretty good about how to setup resources with respect to the UI ( e.g. Strings/en-us/Resources.resw ) but not what to do if you want to also be able to draw strings from a different language. When the words in the content fields show in Latin I don't want the UI to also be in Latin.

Suggestions on best way to do this?
Thanks,
-Tom19

Answer 1

Hi Tom19,

Not quite understand your question, I would like to clarify something with you.

You mentioned when the words in the content fields (like TextBox?) show in Latin I don't want the UI to also be in Latin. Is that means user input is Latin while your UI should be something like English?

I think this kind of situation is about user operation system environment setting, for instance my region could be en-us but my input method could be something like Chinese, Japanses, thus I can type Chinese while my UI keeps English.

Or do I mis-understand something?

--James

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Answer 2

Strangely my reply seems to have not been posted. So I'll reply again.

Imagine an app where you can choose a phrase for example "Where is the bathroom?" in various languages.
There exists pretty good examples of how to bind string resources to x:uid so that controls in the UI (xaml) will get the correct content based on the user locale - but it is not clear how that should interact with ability to define strings for different languages that are used for content. Will I need to create a different .resw type file for my content strings? Or would the "Where is the bathroom?" in Russian string live in the ru-ru .resw used for the UI? Note: you would still need to be able to access the Russian string even if the UI language was English en-us.

Answer 3

Hi Tom19,

I did not receive the email notification on my mailbox for your reply, that's weird. Sorry for the late response.

Basically we have the best practice documentation for you: Creating and retrieving resources in Windows Store apps also Quickstart: Using string resources, take a look at the documentations to see if these helps.

--James

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