Creating MSI packages in other languagesThis tutorial will guide you step by step into the creation of a MSI packages in languages other than that of the project. It is addressed to those who have previous experience in using the Advanced Installer application to create MSI packages, but only in English.
Create the projectFollow the Professional Installation tutorial to create the Advanced Installer project. Select English as the project language. Add other languages to the build
Let's specify the languages in which we want to have MSIs created.
In the tree, select the languages you want to generate MSI packages in. Let's say Chinese Simplified and German.
Build the MSI packagesNow that you have specified the languages you want MSIs in, let's build them.
To find the created MSI packages, look on your hard drive in the folder where the project MSI is being created. The localized MSIs will be built in subfolders, named by their language identifiers. In our case, a folder "zh" will contain the Chinese build and a folder "de" the German one. Run the Chinese MSI by double clicking on it to see how it looks like:
Nice and foreign! Expand package localizationBy default, Advanced Installer will attempt to translate only package elements that are specified for translation. This includes all UI strings and certain Windows Installer Properties. However, sometimes you want to translate other elements as well. Still in the Languages tab of the Media page, click on the in the "Translations" group. This is the Localization Options Dialog. Let's select "Features" and click .
If we build again, Advanced Installer will try to translate the "Features" localizable strings (the main feature's Title and Description, but it won't have translations for them so it will default to English. Create translation dictionaryNow, Advanced Installer did its best to translate everything into the languages we wanted but in certain cases - like the product name - it just didn't have the corresponding German or Chinese string. So we have to help it with a Translation Dictionary. Still in the Languages tab of the Translations page, click on the , also in the Translations group. The wizard will create a dictionary file containing all the strings without translation in one of the build languages.
Translate dictionaryThe dictionary file is a regular XML file saved in the UTF-8 encoding. You can edit with any Unicode aware editor that can save in UTF-8. Notepad on Windows XP is such an editor, although a fully featured validating XML editor would be preferred. So open the dictionary file in Notepad, translate the entries you want translated and comment out (or delete) the rest.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<DICTIONARY type="multilanguage">
<ENTRY id="Feature.Title.MainFeature">
<STRING lang="en" value="MainFeature"/>
<STRING lang="zh" value="Main Chinese Feature"/>
<STRING lang="de" value="Main German Feature"/>
</ENTRY>
<ENTRY id="Property.ProductName">
<STRING lang="en" value="Long Story"/>
<STRING lang="zh" value="Long Chinese Story"/>
<STRING lang="de" value="Long German Story"/>
</ENTRY>
</DICTIONARY>Build and run the Chinese MSI again. Note how the strings were now taken from the supplied dictionary.
The EndThis concludes our tutorial. To learn more, please read the New Language tutorial. | |
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