internationalization interview questions
Top internationalization frequently asked interview questions
I am getting Arabic text from server successfully. Retrieved text I want display in code but its showing boxes instead of Arabic text. Assume that t array values are Arabic text from server.
string[] t={" "};
Textview tv = (Textview) findviewByid(R.id.text);
tv.setText(t[0]);
Source: (StackOverflow)
I'm attempting to sort a list of strings in a locale-aware manner. I've used the Babel library for other i18n-related tasks, but it doesn't support sorting. Python's locale module provides a strcoll function, but requires the locale of the process to be set to the one I want to work with. Kind of a pain, but I can live with it.
The problem is that I can't seem to actually set the locale. The documentation for the locale module gives this example:
import locale
locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'de_DE')
When I run that, I get this:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "C:\Python26\Lib\locale.py", line 494, in setlocale
locale.Error: unsupported locale setting
What am I doing wrong?
Source: (StackOverflow)
We are currently creating a JavaScript application with backbone.js,
and we need it translated or at least to support internationalization (I18n) in the future.
I've been looking around and found many libraries that help; Some are fairly simple where others seem overly complex. I found these in the past few hours:
Are there some blogs or sites that compare such frameworks?
I would like to see if others already pointed out the pluses or pitfalls on any of these libraries.
We created our app module based on Require.js so if it has module support, that's definitely a plus.
Another requirement would be setting the locale after initialization, after we fetch the data from a webservice. We can't store static JSON files, except maybe for a default language, with the app. The translations come from a database and need to be sent to the app via a webservice, so we need to set the localization data dynamically instead of through JSON files. This is supported at least in Jed and i18next and jsperanto, but most likely also in others. In any case the app must never be blocked from execution.
I'm asking for help deciding which library suits best.
Something I noticed that is already missing in Jed, is providing a graceful alternative when a translation is not present in the locale dictionary. Jed just throws an error, something I find disturbing.
I prefer a cleaner way of handling missing translations, either provide a default string, print the key back to the screen. Additionally, but definitely not required, one could have the feature like i18next has, to post missing translations to a webservice. Though we won't need this, it is a nice feature.
Source: (StackOverflow)
When one creates web content in languages different than English the problem of search engine optimized and user friendly URLs emerge.
I'm wondering whether it is the best practice to use de-accented letters in URLs -- risking that some words have completely different meanings with and without certain accents -- or it is better to stick to the usage of non-english characters where appropriate sacrificing the readability of those URLs in less advanced environments (e.g. MSIE, view source).
"Exotic" letters could appear anywhere: in titles of documents, in tags, in user names, etc, so they're not always under the complete supervision of the maintainer of the website.
A possible approach of course would be setting up alternate -- unaccented -- URLs as well which would point to the original destination, but I would like to learn your opinions about using accented URLs as primary document identifiers.
Source: (StackOverflow)
So matz made the decision to keep upcase and downcase limited to /[A-Z]/i in ruby 1.9.1.
ActiveSupport::Multibyte has long had great i18n case jiggering in ruby 1.8.x via String#mb_chars.
However, when tried under ruby 1.9.1, it doesn't seem to work. Here's a simple test script I wrote, along with the output I'm getting:
$ cat test.rb
# encoding: UTF-8
puts("@ #{RUBY_VERSION} " + (__ENCODING__ rescue $KCODE).to_s)
sd, su = "Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiøn", "IÑTËRNÂTIÔNÀLIZÆTIØN"
def ps(u, d, k); puts "%-30s: %24s / %-24s" % [k, u, d] end
ps sd.upcase, su.downcase, "Plain ruby"
require 'rubygems'; require 'active_support'
ps sd.upcase, su.downcase, "With active_support"
ps sd.mb_chars.upcase.to_s, su.mb_chars.downcase.to_s, "With active_support mb_chars"
$ ruby -KU test.rb
@ 1.8.7 UTF8
Plain ruby : IñTëRNâTIôNàLIZæTIøN / iÑtËrnÂtiÔnÀlizÆtiØn
With active_support : IñTëRNâTIôNàLIZæTIøN / iÑtËrnÂtiÔnÀlizÆtiØn
With active_support mb_chars : IÑTËRNÂTIÔNÀLIZÆTIØN / iñtërnâtiônàlizætiøn
$ ruby1.9 test.rb
@ 1.9.1 UTF-8
Plain ruby : IñTëRNâTIôNàLIZæTIøN / iÑtËrnÂtiÔnÀlizÆtiØn
With active_support : IñTëRNâTIôNàLIZæTIøN / iÑtËrnÂtiÔnÀlizÆtiØn
With active_support mb_chars : IñTëRNâTIôNàLIZæTIøN / iÑtËrnÂtiÔnÀlizÆtiØn
So, how do I get internationalized upcase and downcase with ruby 1.9.1?
update
I should add that I also tested with ActiveSupport from the current master, 2-3-* and 3-0-unstable rails branches at GitHub. Same results.
Source: (StackOverflow)
When should I use <resource-bundle> and <message-bundle> tags for localization in faces-config.xml? The differences between those two are not very clear to me.
Source: (StackOverflow)
I have been trying to detect the browser language preference using JavaScript.
If I set the browser language in IE in Tools>Internet Options>General>Languages, how do I read this value using JavaScript?
Same problem for Firefox. I'm not able to detect the setting for tools>options>content>languages using navigator.language.
Using navigator.userLanguage , it detects the setting done thru
Start>ControlPanel>RegionalandLanguageOptions>Regional Options tab.
I have tested with navigator.browserLanguage and navigator.systemLanguage but neither returns the value for the first setting(Tools>InternetOptions>General>Languages)
I found a link which discusses this in detail, but the question remains unanswered :(
Source: (StackOverflow)
I was going to ask a question about preparing a desktop application to support multiple languages on the UI.
In my search for existing questions on the topic I was thinking the word "International", so I selected the Internationalization tag and read through some matching questions.
Eventually I realized I should probably be looking under questions tagged Localization instead. However it appears I'm not alone in getting these two terms mixed up.
So, what are they key differences between Localization and Internationalization?
Also, is a clear distinction between them really that important?
Source: (StackOverflow)
on iPhone NSLocalizedString returns the string in the language of the iPhone.
Is it possible to force NSLocalizedString to use a specific language to have the app
in a different language than the device ?
Source: (StackOverflow)
Why 1753? What do they have against 1752? My great great great great great great great grandfather would be very offended.
Source: (StackOverflow)
I've been struggling with this question for quite some months now, but I haven't been in a situation that I needed to explore all possible options before. Right now, I feel like it's time to get to know the possibilities and create my own personal preference to use in my upcoming projects.
Let me first sketch the situation I'm looking for
I'm about to upgrade/redevelop a content management system which I've been using for quite a while now. However, I'm feeling multi language is a great improvement to this system. Before I did not use any frameworks but I'm going to use Laraval4 for the upcoming project. Laravel seems the best choice of a cleaner way to code PHP. Sidenote: Laraval4 should be no factor in your answer. I'm looking for general ways of translation that are platform/framework independent.
What should be translated
As the system I am looking for needs to be as user friendly as possible the method of managing the translation should be inside the CMS. There should be no need to start up an FTP connection to modify translation files or any html/php parsed templates.
Furthermore, I'm looking for the easiest way to translate multiple database tables perhaps without the need of making additional tables.
What did I come up with myself
As I've been searching, reading and trying things myself already. There are a couple of options I have. But I still don't feel like I've reached a best practice method for what I am really seeking. Right now, this is what I've come up with, but this method also has it side effects.
- PHP Parsed Templates: the template system should be parsed by PHP. This way I'm able to insert the translated parameters into the HTML without having to open the templates and modify them. Besides that, PHP parsed templates gives me the ability to have 1 template for the complete website instead of having a subfolder for each language (which I've had before). The method to reach this target can be either Smarty, TemplatePower, Laravel's Blade or any other template parser. As I said this should be independent to the written solution.
- Database Driven: perhaps I don't need to mention this again. But the solution should be database driven. The CMS is aimed to be object oriented and MVC, so I would need to think of a logical data structure for the strings. As my templates would be structured: templates/Controller/View.php perhaps this structure would make the most sense:
Controller.View.parameter. The database table would have these fields a long with a value field. Inside the templates we could use some sort method like echo __('Controller.View.welcome', array('name', 'Joshua')) and the parameter contains Welcome, :name. Thus the result being Welcome, Joshua. This seems a good way to do this, because the parameters such as :name are easy to understand by the editor.
- Low Database Load: Of course the above system would cause loads of database load if these strings are being loaded on the go. Therefore I would need a caching system that re-renders the language files as soon as they are edited/saved in the administration environment. Because files are generated, also a good file system layout is needed. I guess we can go with
languages/en_EN/Controller/View.php or .ini, whatever suits you best. Perhaps an .ini is even parsed quicker in the end. This fould should contain the data in the format parameter=value;
. I guess this is the best way of doing this, since each View that is rendered can include it's own language file if it exists. Language parameters then should be loaded to a specific view and not in a global scope to prevent parameters from overwriting each other.
- Database Table translation: this in fact is the thing I'm most worried about. I'm looking for a way to create translations of News/Pages/etc. as quickly as possible. Having two tables for each module (for example
News and News_translations) is an option but it feels like to much work to get a good system. One of the things I came up with is based on a data versioning system I wrote: there is one database table name Translations, this table has a unique combination of language, tablename and primarykey. For instance: en_En / News / 1 (Referring to the English version of the News item with ID=1). But there are 2 huge disadvantages to this method: first of all this table tends to get pretty long with a lot of data in the database and secondly it would be a hell of a job to use this setup to search the table. E.g. searching for the SEO slug of the item would be a full text search, which is pretty dumb. But on the other hand: it's a quick way to create translatable content in every table very fast, but I don't believe this pro overweights the con's.
- Front-end Work: Also the front-end would need some thinking. Of course we would store the available languages in a database and (de)active the ones we need. This way the script can generate a dropdown to select a language and the back-end can decide automatically what translations can be made using the CMS. The chosen language (e.g. en_EN) would then be used when getting the language file for a view or to get the right translation for a content item on the website.
So, there they are. My ideas so far. They don't even include localization options for dates etc yet, but as my server supports PHP5.3.2+ the best option is to use the intl extension as explained here: http://devzone.zend.com/1500/internationalization-in-php-53/ - but this would be of use in any later stadium of development. For now the main issue is how to have the best practics of translation of the content in a website.
Besides everything I explained here, I still have another thing which I haven't decided yet, it looks like a simple question, but in fact it's been giving me headaches:
URL Translation? Should we do this or not? and in what way?
So.. if I have this url: http://www.domain.com/about-us and English is my default language. Should this URL be translated into http://www.domain.com/over-ons when I choose Dutch as my language? Or should we go the easy road and simply change the content of the page visible at /about. The last thing doesn't seem a valid option because that would generate multiple versions of the same URL, this indexing the content will fail the right way.
Another option is using http://www.domain.com/nl/about-us instead. This generates at least a unique URL for each content. Also this would be easier to go to another language, for example http://www.domain.com/en/about-us and the URL provided is easier to understand for both Google and Human visitors. Using this option, what do we do with the default languages? Should the default language remove the language selected by default? So redirecting http://www.domain.com/en/about-us to http://www.domain.com/about-us ... In my eyes this is the best solution, because when the CMS is setup for only one language there is no need to have this language identification in the URL.
And a third option is a combination from both options: using the "language-identification-less"-URL (http://www.domain.com/about-us) for the main language. And use an URL with a translated SEO slug for sublanguages: http://www.domain.com/nl/over-ons & http://www.domain.com/de/uber-uns
I hope my question gets your heads cracking, they cracked mine for sure! It did help me already to work things out as a question here. Gave me a possibility to review the methods I've used before and the idea's I'm having for my upcoming CMS.
I would like to thank you already for taking the time to read this bunch of text!
// Edit #1:
I forgot to mention: the __() function is an alias to translate a given string. Within this method there obviously should be some sort of fallback method where the default text is loaded when there are not translations available yet. If the translation is missing it should either be inserted or the translation file should be regenerated.
Source: (StackOverflow)
I'm wondering how to deal internationalization in JavaScript. I googled but I'm not getting convincing answers for:
- Does JavaScript have native support for internationalization?
- What is i18n in JavaScript?
- How to deal with calendars, currencies, dates, etc.?
I've already read Internationalization inside Javascript.
Source: (StackOverflow)
I just updated to Xcode 4.
Normally when localizing apps we add "Localizable.String" file to the project, and then navigate to "Get Info" menu and click the "Make It Localized" button.
However, in Xcode 4, there is no "Get Info" menu.
When I try to add a language it only effects the "InfoPlist.String" file (wich can only localize the app's name).
How may I add localization to my app in Xcode 4?
Source: (StackOverflow)
What is the best way to support multiple languages for the interface in an ASP.NET MVC application? I've seen people use resource files for other applications. Is this still the best way?
Source: (StackOverflow)