Creating a File Translation Dictionary

You can replace user-created text in Geo SCADA Expert with alternative (or translated) text. To do this, you need to create a Translation Dictionary which contains the user-created text and associated translations. You then mark the text in Geo SCADA Expert that you want translated and Geo SCADA Expert will perform a search and replace using the Translation Dictionary.

There are two types of Translation Dictionary you can create: A File Translation Dictionary or an In-Database Translation Dictionary. For more information on which type will meet your specific needs, see Introduction to the Geo SCADA Expert Translation Dictionary.

This topic refers to the File Translation Dictionary only. For information about the In-Database Translation Dictionary, see Understanding the In-Database Translation Dictionary. For an introduction to the File Translation Dictionary, see Understanding the File Translation Dictionary.

To set up a File Translation Dictionary you need to create and configure three types of Dictionary file in a specific Dictionary folder (see File Translation Dictionary Server Setting).

The three types of Dictionary file, and the order in which Geo SCADA Expert will search them, is as follows:

1. Country-specific file
2. Region-specific file
3. Default dictionary file.

The Dictionary files contain search text (the text marked for translation in Geo SCADA Expert) and the associated translations (the text that will replace the marked text). There should be Dictionary files for each locale.

For more about the search and replace process, see Understanding the File Translation Dictionary.

Each Dictionary file is a simple text file that you can create in Windows® Notepad® or any word processor. The naming conventions for the three types of Dictionary file are as follows:

1. Country-specific file—The country-specific file contains translations that are country-specific. For example, translations in US English. You need to name the file according to the ISO standards 639-1 and 3166:

   <language>-<REGION>.txt

   NOTE: The language has to be in lower case with the region in upper case.

   For example, if the file contains translated text in US English, you would name the file en-US.txt. The file would contain the search text and the associated translations.

2. Region-specific file—The region-specific file contains translations in a particular language that are not country-specific. For example, generic English translations rather than US English or UK English translations. Geo SCADA Expert will only search for the marked text in the region-specific file if it was unable to locate this text in the country-specific file. You need to name the region-specific file according to the ISO 3166 standard:

   <language>.txt

   For example, en.txt for English translations.

   NOTE: The language has to be in lower case.

3. Default file—The default Dictionary file contains generic translations. Geo SCADA Expert will only search for the marked text in the Default file if it was unable to locate this text in the country-specific or region-specific files. You need to name the default Dictionary file as follows:

   Default.txt

To create a File Translation Dictionary file:

1. Use Windows® Notepad® or any Word Processor program to create a document. The document will be saved as a plain text file (.txt).
2. In the document, define a base locale for the file if required. You only need to define a base locale if the language of the dictionary file you are creating is not currently supported by your version of Geo SCADA Expert.

   Geo SCADA Expert currently supports several languages including English, Spanish, Dutch and Russian. To see which languages are available on your system, display the Options window. Select the Locale combo box (the combo box contains a list of the available languages). You can also view the available languages by using the Locale combo box on the User Form for your User account.

   If you want to create a Dictionary file for a language that is not listed in the Locale combo box, you will need to define a base locale.

   To define a base locale, enter the following in the dictionary file:

   BASE_LOCALE("<language>-<REGION>")

   Where <language>-<REGION> is the Geo SCADA Expert supported language that will be used for the base elements of your system (menus, options etc.). The <language>-<REGION> has to be entered in the same format as a country-specific file. For example, if you were creating a dictionary file for Afrikaans, you could have a base locale of US English. This would mean that the text you specify in your Afrikaans dictionary file would be translated into Afrikaans and the base features of Geo SCADA Expert such as menus and menu options would be displayed in US English. To put this into effect, you would need to define the following in your Dictionary file for Afrikaans:

   BASE_LOCALE("en-US")

   When you create a Dictionary file for a language that is not supported by Geo SCADA Expert, you have to define a base locale for a language that is supported as well. The language of your Dictionary file will be available for selection on the User Forms.

3. In the document, enter the original text followed by the translated text:

   "Original Text", "Translated Text"

   Each text item is enclosed in double quotes and the original and translated text are separated by a comma. A new line is required for each text item and its translation.

   NOTE: If you want to add comments to the Dictionary file to aid other users, use a single quotation to indicate the start of the comment, for example 'this is a comment to assist other users. There is no need to use an ending quotation mark.

4. When you have entered the text items, save the file as a .txt file. The file has to follow these naming conventions:

   language-REGION.txt
   language.txt
   Default.txt

   Where language has to be in lower case and is the language code specified in the ISO 6391 standard, and REGION has to be in upper case and is the regional variant of the language as specified in the ISO 3166 standard.

   You should store the dictionary files in a folder that is suitably named so that it is easy to identify (see File Translation Dictionary Server Setting).