Need Help on Multilanguage

[RaffiqEddy]

Hi

Can I make the MS Access table with one column in English (default) and next column is the translation of the 1st column (ex: English to Chinese / Arabic / etc.)

Anyone can help me?

Thanks.

 

[Hasse]

I bet this ain't that simple - though I'm no pro - it's even quite weird as a question. I really wonder where you need this for...

Anyway, in case you have a good reason for your question and want us to understand your situation a bit better, you have to deliver the forum some more information.

Like: what dictionary did you intend to use for this translation and in which format is it available?
=> if it's available in tabular form, I think it can be done using queries.
=> If it's in simple textual form (comparable with Word's dictionaries) I suggest importing or linking these dictionaries & designing queries using these. Maybe it also can be done with some programming but that's not my cup of tea.
=> If you dream about using windows' own resources, I'm sorry to say that don't
I also assume that the dictionary you have in mind has multiple translations for multiple words. How would you solve this?
Hasse

 

[mickeyred]

RaffiqEddy:

How 'bout building a table for each particular language? That way, you could, as Hasse pointed out, use a query, with/or Case and CaseElse functions, to "translate" the word, passage, etc from one language to another. This is making the assumption that you just want to perform a translation in a limited fashion.

On the other hand, doing so for the whole page as some webpages let you do, can be easily attempted by assigning a button#-language# relationship from a default language (of your choice). An OnClick event will take the user from the default to the selection by looking into the appropiate table - a single table could become too large or tedious to manage. A bonus with having multiple tables is that you could allow multiple users updating the same data in diff't languages @ the same time. Hope this info is of use to all!

Regards,

mickeyred

 

[RaffiqEddy]

Hi

Ok, maybe I need to elaborate some more info, it actually quite simple, the table I tried to develop will contain Chinese famous quote with English translation.

It'll look like this:

Meaning       | English  | Chinese
============= | =======  | =============
a new morning |  Fudan   | ~!@# $%^& *()

So, u see although I not Chinese literate, but I still can find out from the table which quote that I want to use.

If this can be done in access, I can easily use query to find quote meaning such as "Flower" (English) or "Hua" (in Chinese).

like this:

SELECT * FROM Quote WHERE Meaning LIKE "*flower*";

The question is: Can I make the table column contains the Chinese character

I hope this will make the my question more relevant

Regards.

 

[Hasse]

Sorry RafficEddy

not my cup of tea - but just in case... maybe this helps you a step further

If (!), like with Greek, there is some font for chinese symbols, you can create a form based on your table, where you assign the 'Chinese' font (like 'symbol') to the text box based on the chinese language field. So, the data in the English field is shown in the regular font (eg Arial) & the Chinese in Chinese.

This might work - but be careful: maybe this requires more technical knowledge about language/symbolsets threatment,... than I have (e.g. towards data storage,...). Also, you'll define the fonts each time you use the Chinese data in a form, report,... So be aware of possible unknown disadvantages!

If I find out how to do it, I'll attach an exemple for the Greek language... - otherwise, and if this'll help you, let it know.

In either case good luck,

Hasse

 

[Francescina]

Since Access2K is using UNICODE there is no problem to store chinese in a table field.
But since I do not use Chinese or any other language using non-latin characters I can not help you any further. You might need to read Michael Kaplan's book on VBA's Internationalization to understand how this works.

Happy programming!