#503 Request for Adding Multilingual Support

[zky777]

Can you add multi-language support? Or instead of hardcoding the text content of the project into the code, use resource files to manage the content text, which will facilitate modifying and compiling language versions suitable for personal use. My native language is Chinese, and my English is not very proficient. I tried to modify the text language and recompile the project, but it was tricky. There were always some parts of the content whose definitions I couldn't locate, making them unmodifiable.

[Maettu]

Technically, the implementation could be changed to enable multi-language support, though it would take several person weeks to accomplish. Planning-wise, this is not something that has priority, given YAT is a hobby project. Also note that in the 20 years of YAT, so far never ever has requested multi-language support. And more strong rationale against:

• Proper well-designed support for languages like Chinese, Japanese or Vietnamese can be quite tricky to fit text into the current design, e.g. Chinese characters likely require more height for proper appearance.
• When adding new features, who will do the translations for all potential languages within reasonable time? I know there's AI and dictionaries and there may even be people to support, but it will also take a major share of my sparse time.
• Once Linux support and scripting, the current priority in development, are ready, I intend to spend time on a wiki documentation. That would also have to be translated...

[zky777]

Thank you for your detailed explanation! I fully understand the concerns around time, complexity, and prioritization. To make this feasible for your hobby project, I’d like to propose a minimized, collaborative approach that reduces your workload:
1. You create the basic multilingual framework and migrate the hardcoded display text into a single default resource file.
2. Then add a multilingual switching option.
3. Users with localization needs will create the required localized resource files.
Does this approach work for you?

[Maettu]

Technically, this is a feasible approach. And this ticket will for sure be kept. Planning-wise, the current priority is documented in https://sourceforge.net/p/y-a-terminal/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/YAT/!-Doc.Project/0%20-%20Planning/2024-08%20-%20next%20steps.md. Prio 1 and 2 are set, prio 3 topics can be adjusted. Time-wise, prio 1 and 2 topics likely take this and next year, maybe even another. Being a hobby project, YAT only sees a couple of hours of work every week.

[zky777]

Okay, got it. Thanks for the reply.