Multilingual Resources

You want your program to be multilingual? Why not, it's really easy to do. I want to show you what you need.

How To Do It?

I should better ask: How not to do it?

One way occurred to me is as follows:

You can write all languages needed into one resource file and add a language key to the resource ID. Here's a sample:

STRINGTABLE
  BEGIN
    STR_TEXT_E, "The english text"
    STR_TEXT_D, "Der deutsche Text"
  END

Figure 1: Sample using one resource file for all languages,

But this leads to many switch statements in your program. Anytime you need a resource (a string, a dialog, a menu), you have to set a different resource ID depending on the current language.

Use Resource Only DLLs

Using resource only dynamic link libraries seems to me the better solution.

There is one resource file (and of course one DLL) for each language. Your only task is to load the right resource DLL when the program starts. You can (should) always use the same resource ID, independent on the selected language. Because you've loaded the right resource DLL, everything is in the right language.

OK, it's not all bright sunshine. Each resource you define, you have to define for each language. Adding something, you have to take care not to forget the other resource libraries. And always take care on updates. Watch out that all resource DLLs are on the same 'resource level'.

What Do I Need?

First, I think you should create one project and therefore one sub-directory for each language. I locate these sub-directories underneath the main project's directory.

The main project includes the one and only resource header file (.rch). So there is just one place where to keep the declaration of the resources up to date.

Each language project has its own resource file (.rc) for the string table. Accelerator and help tables can be part of a central file of the ma