Strategies for .NET localization using resource files

Question

• If you're going to localize your .NET app (WPF, ASP, etc), the standard implementation involves resources files, of which you'll have many (Resources.resx, Resources.fr.resx, Resources.es.resx, etc).
• For any non-trivial application, these resource files are huge.
• Since programmers are generally not also translators, your company needs to hire dedicated translators.

Questions:

1. How can you ensure all keys are identical across all resource files? What stops a translator from fat-fingering one of the keys?

2. How do translators edit all these strings? The .resx files are really awful xml files, no one can be expected to edit them by hand. So every translator needs their own copy of Visual Studio? And your entire source code?

Answer 1

Answers:

1. See 2.

2. Provide them with a ressource editor. There are many available for free:

   http://www.zeta-resource-editor.com/index.html

   https://code.google.com/p/simpleresxeditor/

   http://resex.codeplex.com/

   http://sourceforge.net/projects/resx/