Add additional languages beyond English, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Polish, German

[Anixx]

Windows releases contained Winfile in multiple languages (such as Russian). This project currently has only English language version.

[craigwi]

I'll go digging in the NT4 source tree for the other languages. I'll need help with any new/changed strings.

[magol]

I can help with the Swedish language version.

[daviunic]

Considering Windows is now available in languages in which NT 4.0 wasn't, will there be any additional translation efforts for such languages?

[ZanderBrown]

@daviunic you offering?

[IQBigBang]

I could do Czech and Slovakia version if developer would want to translate...

[thecatkitty]

I can help with the Polish resources.

I think it would be rather all languages in one EXE than additional MUI files, wouldn't it?

[NazmusLabs]

I'd be able to help with translations in French and Bengali, as I speak these languages as well. So even if Windows NT didn't support one of these languages, we can have them.

[QianNangong]

I can help with translations in Simplified Chinese.

[daviunic]

@ZanderBrown yes, I could do the Slovenian translation.

[craigwi]

I have yet to find any translations of the WinFile strings inside Microsoft.

What do folks think about @thecatkitty's idea that all languages are in one EXE?

[ZanderBrown]

Makes sense, perhaps we need additional UI to override system language?

[Anixx]

I do not think this utility should override system language.

[mischastik]

I'd be glad to help if assistance with German is needed.

[ZanderBrown]

@Anixx to clarify:

WinFile should use the system language by default, as should all applications, but have the option to manually specify a language use

[Anixx]

@ZanderBrown I know no app that provides this feature, not necessary in my opinion.

[NazmusLabs]

@Anixx I've seen plenty of apps that give you the option to switch to another language or use the default system language.

I'm not arguing either way in this case. I'm just noting that I've seen may apps that do this and many that don't.

This feature will definitely be useful for Windows 7 or older. Windows 7 doesn't let you switch languages on the fly unless you have ultimate. With windows 10, there are more languages to download on demand that ever, and the process is very easy now that it is distributed through the Windows Store, as of Version 1803.

Again, I'm neutral in regards to this point, as it doesn't affect me significantly and, thus, won't be fair for me to just pick a side for the same of it.

[rafnogueira]

I could try to help in translations to Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese .

[ttsirkia]

How the translation was originally done?

[craigwi]

I'm still trying to track down the original translations and the tools used. What I found thus far (scouring a repo and also asking someone) was the attached file (without the .txt extension).

winfile.tok.txt

I was hoping to find other languages, but this is the think I have found thus far.

[thecatkitty]

@ttsirkia my speculations: It seems line there were a bunch of RC files, one for every language. During the build process of a particular localized release (Windows before 2000 was always single-language) they might just select which source directory contains RC files for the language and compile it instead of the English one.

With Windows PE EXE resources it is very simple to have multi-language versions of UI elements. Splitting it into one file per every language is also easy. Moreover, it would make it possible to build the executable with one locale, all locales or selected locales. But there are still two things to consider:

1. If @craigwi doesn't manage to find the original Windows NT translation files (perhaps they're are not there; they could be in Microsoft's foreign divisions' archives as well), are we going to translate everything ourselves? The number of translations would be very limited then. The second question (and probably an option) there is: Are we permitted to extract these localized strings from (eg.) NT4 Service Pack update files (which is trivial, as seen below). It wouldn't make Craig search for the code which might just not be there, but on the other hand, I am unable to tell if this would be a legally clean solution.
2. We need to decide if the user should have a possibility of selecting a non-default language. It is possible. One option is to use FindResourceEx, the second, a more straightforward approach, would be to use SetThreadLocale, but MSDN says that it shouldn't be used for changing the UI language. I am not sure why.

[fitojb]

Heyo! In the spirit of open source collaboration, I’ll be glad to help out with Spanish and Catalan translations.

[TheFanatr]

I'd be happy to help with Romanian if needed.

[craigwi]

Hi folks. We are in the final stages of getting PR #120 added to master. If you volunteered to write a translation, you can begin that process using as a guide what @MouriNaruto and @mattn have done. Don't forget to put it in the lang subdirectory and find the right locale string to use.

[craigwi]

We are up to four languages (once I add Polish). Several folks indicated willingness to help: @magol, @IQBigBang, @NazmusLabs, @daviunic, @mischastik, @bitsbr, @fitojb, and @TheFanatr.

Follow the patterns in recent PR with #143 being the most recent.

[NazmusLabs]

I'm able to do French and Bengali. French would be the first one to target.

[peterooch]

One thing to note, Right-to-left languages (such as Arabic, Hebrew) use DIALOGEX instead of DIALOG, and to use EXSTYLE WS_EX_LAYOUTRTL to enable mirrored layout. Non-dialog mirroring is on its way + Hebrew translation (since the wfw3.1 version)

[craigwi]

Thanks @peterooch for solving the RTL issues. German is in the works by @BaldwinTechnology.

I am looking at applying the change by @malxau for resizable dialogs in a way that doesn't burden all translations. Thus other translations can proceed.

Those offering: @magol, @IQBigBang, @NazmusLabs, @daviunic, @mischastik, @bitsbr, @fitojb, and @TheFanatr.

[clzls]

@Anixx @craigwi The title of this issue need a change now (or closing it), since we have so many languages other than English now.(Hebrew, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, German, Polish...) Since we have so many languages, we may be able to create a Translators' List (or so) now.