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Multilingual Installs

MSIStudio can be used to create installation packages in any language. MSIStudio projects are created by default in English. You can create separate installations for each language or a single installation supporting all languages. MSIStudio supports both methods of deployment. When the installation is identical for each language, then it makes sense to combine all languages into a single installation package thus eliminating duplication. All of the visual aspects of the installation will be translated including dialogs boxes, progress text, status and error messages.

Using a bootstrapper, a language selection dialog can be present at the beginning of the installation. This will list all available languages and will default to the current system locale.

Translations are accessed from the project release settings. Under Languages, you can select all of the desired target languages. The most common languages are provided at the top.

Full translations for the basic user interface are provided for the following languages:

For other languages, or if custom dialog boxes or other user interface elements have been created, the user is responsible for providing the additional translated content. The translation files are stored in the Languages folder under the MSIStudio application installation folder. Translation files are named 1032.xml, 1034.xml, etc where the filename refers to the numeric language identifer of the language. MSIStudio loads these files when it translates from English into other languages. They are in standard XML format for easy viewing and modification. Additional translations can be added to these files for any new strings that have been added to the user interface. Each translation consists of an English string followed by its translation. New translation files can be created from scratch for languages that are not supplied with MSIStudio. These will be then used automatically at build time.

English is used as the base language for all installation packages. The installation package is first created in English. When generating a translated version of this package, a copy of the English package is made and the strings in the database are translated in place using the appropriate translation file. A transform is then created using the English package as the base and the translated package as the target. This transform is then embedded within the original setup package making this language available at installation time. It is possible in the release settings to keep the translated .msi files in the build folder. This may be useful if distributing the individual languages separately.

Untranslated Strings
A useful feature is the ability to output a file listing all untranslated strings for each language. This can be set from the release settings. If MSIStudio cannot find translations for certain user interface elements at build time, there is the option to create xml files with missing translations. These files will contain the English versions of the strings and a placeholder for the translated strings. These files can be distributed to translators and then the content merged back into the main translation files.

At installation time, the language to use is selected in a number of ways. If there is no bootstrapper, then Windows Installer will search the installation package for a language that matches with the current system language. If this language is available as a transform then the transform is applied before starting the installation. If the language is not available, then the default language is displayed. If a bootstrapper is used, a language selection dialog is displayed to the user, and they can select the language of the installation. The default select will match the current system language if it is available.

License Agreement Text
License agreement texts are handled differently to regular translatable strings because of the amount of content they contain and because they are company specific. MSIStudio provides no license agreements files apart from an English sample. License agreements must be provided in RTF format and separate translated files should be supplied by the user for other languages.

License agreements are displayed in a scrollable text control inside a dialog box. This control is linked to a filename containing the content. In order for translated versions of the files to be used when building other languages, there should exist a file in the Languages folder with the same name as the original file and including a language id suffix in the file name. For example, if the English version of the license agreement file is called LicenseText.rtf, a German translated version of the same file should be named LicenseText1034.rtf. If this file doesn't exist, the English version is used.

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