Localizing a Windows Phone app Step by Step

by WindowsPhoneGeek

In this article I am going to talk about how to localize a Windows Phone application.

Basically you need to separate localizable resources from the rest of the code by creating language-specific resource files. Visual Studio uses these files to create assemblies that allow your application to support many languages.

For reference take a look at the MSDN documentation.

Getting Started

Step1: Create a Windows Phone 7 application project.

Step2: Add a resource file for the default language of your application. In our case we will add a resource file named AppResources.resx

Step3: Open the resource file and enter the strings that you want to be localized in the resource file.

NOTE: It is important to consider the following requirements while editing strings in the resource editor:

• The name must be unique. Make it as descriptive as possible.

• The value is the string that will be displayed to the user in the application.

• The comment is optional, but it is helpful for translators, especially in large resource files with many strings.

Step4:  Copy the resource file once for each additional language that you want your app to support. Note that each resource file must contain the correct culture/language name, as described in Culture and Language Support for Windows Phone.  In our case we will use the following name of the file  AppResources.de-DE.resx (for the culture German (Germany)). The general resource file name format is :

<name of main resource>.<culture name>.resx

Step5: Translate the strings in the additionally added files.

Step6: Edit the project file to define the additional cultures / languages the application will support. To do this first unload the project file by pressing the mouse right button on the project and then select "Unload Project":

After that again press the mouse right button on the project and select "Edit" from the context menu:

Finally you will need to add the names of the additional cultures in the project file the following way:  <SupportedCultures>de-DE;</SupportedCultures>

NOTE: If you have more than one additional culture you can include them in this way (note that semicolon is used to separate the culture names): <SupportedCultures>de-DE;es-ES;</SupportedCultures>

Step7: Make sure that the Access Modifier of all resource files(including the default one) is set to Public!

Step8: Create a new class that will have a property exposing the resources:

public class LocalizedStrings
{
    public LocalizedStrings()
    {
    }

    private static AppResources localizedResources = new AppResources();

    public AppResources AppResources
    {
        get { return localizedResources; }
    }
}

In the example above AppResources is the name of the class generated automatically for the resource files:

Step9: Open the App.xaml file and add the following code:

<Application.Resources>
    <local:LocalizedStrings xmlns:local="clr-namespace:WPLocalization" x:Key="LocalizedStrings" />
</Application.Resources>

Step10: Whenever you want to show a localized string in your app you will have to bind to a specific property of the global resource that we have just defined. The property names correspond to the resource names in the resource files. Example:

<TextBlock x:Name="PageTitle" 
Text="{Binding Path=AppResources.Title, Source={StaticResource LocalizedStrings}}" 
Margin="9,-7,0,0" 
Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextTitle1Style}"/>

To test the localization you will have to change the Display Language of the emulator in this way:

Here is the result:

That was all about how to localize a  Windows Phone application.  You can find the full source code here:

I hope that the article was helpful.

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Comments

    private string _lc;
    public string LC
    {
        get { return _lc; }
        set
        {
            _lc = value;
            Path = new PropertyPath(string.Format(@"AppResources.{0}", value));
        }
    }
}