CODEWITHSUNDEEP
localization
locka
locka

Reputation: 6029

How do I implement hotkeys in ideographic languages?

I have an application implemented in German / English. It uses property files for the translation strings in the various menus and dialogs. The problem I have is that these files have a separate mnemonic field like so:

Field1_Label=Open a file
Field1_Label_MNEMONIC=1O

So in this example, the MNEMONIC tells the dialog to underline the O, and if the the user types ALT+O, the dialog will set focus to the entry field / button associated with the label.

So far so good.

The problem I face is that the product is being translated into Chinese and Japanese. These ideographic languages use input method editors (IMEs) to compose their symbols. A symbol might be composed by phonetically typing the word into the IME which then produces the corresponding Chinese text. So I can't underline a symbol because there is no key equivalent to it.

So what do I do? What is best practice for dealing with this? I could potentially just remove all mnemonics altogether. I could potentially throw an ASCII char at the end of the string to acts as the mnemonic.

But what is the best industry practice for this?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 43

Answers (1)

Julien Ruffin
Julien Ruffin

Reputation: 862

The usual practice is what you hinted at in your question: the Latin character used for the original mnemonic is appended to the translated text in parentheses. Look at some screenshots of e.g. Japanese user interfaces and you will notice that UI elements tend looking like this:

File(F) | Edit(E) | View(V) | ...

Here are some examples:

http://www.komeiharada.com/Japanese/Tategaki.gif

https://i.sstatic.net/7N5XB.png

Upvotes: 1

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