Language Translation & Keyboard Characters

[Sorrells]

My client desires that certain text in the data tables of the application I am building be available to users in Spanish and Russian both in forms and reports.

I feel confident about the ability to create additional tables with translated text but am unsure how to handle special keyboard characters, particularly in Russian for display on the PC prior to printing. Any thoughts on this subject and references to possible resources would be greatly appreciated.

In addition, in 2 cases within the running of the program, she wants a translation from English to one or the other language on the fly. I have spent considerable time looking for possible translators with little success. Again, I'd sure appreciate comments from those who have built similar environments.

 

[Sorrells]

Unicode plays a roll?

I have not gained much information since posting. In searching the Newsgroups I ran across a convention for incorporating all languages into a character code called Unicode. Apparently this is an expanded character set from ASCI that is 2 bytes in length and can incorporate any language used today, the larger size being able to hold a much larger range of characters.

According to what I have read, this was a major enhancement from Access97 to 2000. Yet, I found little about using Unicode in VBA coding. There are font sets for Unicode, perhaps rather limited. I found references to two, Code2000 and Arial Unicode MS. Are there more and where are they to be found?

If these font sets are not commonly found, can I incorporate them in a commercially produced program?

What bothers me is that I found nothing on how to leverage Unicode. For example, it I created two related data tables, one in English and another in French then wanted to display or print both out of a query would this require any thing out of the ordinary? This I will experiment with today.

 

[Mile-O]

I can tell you that the StrConv() function can convert data to and from Unicode although I've never used it in that context.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Here's a book that might be interesting:

Internationalization With Visual Basic (Sams White Book Series)
by Michael S. Kaplan
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...f=sr_1_7/102-5585435-7221749?v=glance&s=books

And here's an article from the MSDN library that should be useful:

Detecting Language Version and Internationalizing Text
http://www.microsoft.com/AccessDev/Articles/HowToBk.HTM

 

[Sorrells]

Mile-O-Phile & Pat,

Thanks for your responses. I was misleading in posing my question. In the program, English will be entered all the time. Then a request to translate this text into the user selected 2nd language would be made. Thus I only need to go from English to another language and saved in a different table.

I have considered purchasing Michael's book but suspect that it is focused on VB, not VBA. I am pretty sure we have established that an Access VBA & VB relationship is not a good one to enter into. If I am wrong, please let me know.

I found MS Visual Keyboard (VK) a wonderful concept that would mostly meet my needs. However its limitations are most likely too great. It is confined to Office 2000 or later software. Also although you can type into a table field you cannot type from VK directly into an Access form textbox. A 3-rd party product may substitute here and I have a few names.

The next areas of investigation are translators and 3-rd party sub-contracting. Microsoft would have a great independent product if they would free VK from Office and make it a little more robust. A major problem for MS is that they allow very little communication from the outside. Besides the newsgroups and MVPs, I don't know of any way to send questions to them.

The Unicode works good in 2000 and XP. I noticed that there were some SQL questions about Unicode on the newsgroups. Are there special SQL considerations I should be considering? Even if I cannot develop an on-the-fly translation, I most likely will be displaying or printing foreign text from SQL calls.

I appreciate your helping me on this problem!
2000 or later software. Also although

 

[Sorrells]

Microsoft Keyboard Language Support?

Microsoft has included language support to Windows 2000 O/S and later for Unicode and a variety of keyboard languages in Win98 and later. I have found that the selection of languages varies from one O/S to another. For example I found Russian on my Win98 PC but not on Windows 2000.

I have spent considerable time searching in forums and newsgroups for information about this capability but without success. I do not even know Microsoft's standard name for this capability. I found the following possible keywords that might reference it but not one explicit document describing it. The keywords are multilingual pack, codepage and Start/Programs/MS Office Tools area.

I do not understand how MS can support several foreign languages in Win98 if this O/S does not support Unicode either.

I need to obtain information if it is possible to incorporate specific languages in a deployable run-time Access XP CD specific languages and the capability to install them on the PC of a person purchasing the program if any of these languages are missing from the PC's selection list.

I would appreciate hearing from anyone with knowledge in these subjects, if such deployment is possible and advice on how I might do this.

 

[Sorrells]

Microsoft Visual Keyboard Question

I returned to the MS Visual Keyboard again, not believing my notes. But once again I found that it would not write into my Access form. I could write a foreign language into MS Word, then copy and paste into Access but not directly.

Has anyone else encountered this?

 

[Sorrells]

IMG Visual Keyboard

Innovation Management Group has a series of software products that include a visual keyboard - now called OnScreen and was named My-T-Soft prior.

I found that the software is dependent on the operating system keyboard layout but otherwise worked nicely to input a foreign language into an Access textbox.

IMG states that they interface with MS Access and have a MDB database consisting of a form, macro and module that I assume makes a good demo. Unfortunately, I am not understanding from this and their documentation how to leverage their software.

My question is, has any one used IMG's Visual Keyboard with Access?

Their main website URL is http://www.imgpresents.com/index.htm.

 

[Sorrells]

Looking for a English to Spanish Translator

I need to obtain a simple English to Spanish translator, reasonably accurate, that I can manipulate through Access. Cost is a real factor but I'd appreciate hearing of all options.
I'd like to hear from any developers who have used either a custom built or 3-party translating program in a deployable Runtime Package.
If you know of any helpful links, please add them to this post.

 

[Sorrells]

Well here it is July 25th and I have not obtained any degree of success. There are a lot of translators out there but none that I have found that can be run from within MS Access. I am going to check out some VB sites for possibilities.

I find it strange that there is so little translation capability available for developers. I have found a number of sites that can translate an application such as an Access program fully into another language but not one that can accept English text and return the Spanish translation.

I'll keep on looking!

 

[delicousfood]

If you want to do spanish translation , let me know. You can put it on this thread. And I'm interested in translating it.

 

[Simon_MT]

This is may not be the right solution but a method.

Google can translate text and there are others on-line. I don't know about the quality of translation but you could pace the text into one of these translation sites and then into access.

Simon