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Implementing UI translation in SumatraPDF, a C++ Windows application

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Translating user interface of SumatraPDF

SumatraPDF is the best PDF/eBook/Comic Book viewer for Windows. It’s small, fast, full of features, free and open-source.

It became popular enough that it made sense to translate the UI for non-English users. Currently we support 72 languages.

This article describes how I designed and implemented a translation system in SumatraPDF, a native win32 C++ Windows application.

Hard things about translating the UI

There are 2 hard things about translating an application

code for translation system (extracting strings to translate, translate strings from English to user’s language)

translating them into many languages

Extracting strings to translate from source code

Currently there are 381 strings in SumatraPDF subject to translation. It’s important that the system requires the least amount of effort when adding new strings to translate.

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