About language switching steps

In order to use language switching for an application or for a client, the first step is to install the languages and fonts that the application is to support. Install languages and fonts on your Windows operating system.

When you save an application's components at design time, the text strings associated with the components, such as local messages, captions, and so on, are saved in the current language.

Use the

Languages

tool to change the default language for an application, and to specify that any strings that are undefined be displayed in the default language. If some strings are undefined in the default language they will be displayed as a question mark (

?

) at runtime.

When you export the strings to an

Excel

spreadsheet, you can specify that the operation be optimized. This means that strings that appear more than once in the application will appear only once in the spreadsheet, and therefore only need to be translated or edited once.

Because button captions can change when the language is switched at runtime, use additional cues to identify the language associated with a given button. For example, use color-coding or a graphic, such as a flag, to distinguish between the language switching buttons.