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Using Excel to ease Java i18n processes

Ah, the perils of reading Bloglines before going to sleep. (I’ll just catch up on one more blog…)
I gave a BJUG talk 18 months ago about large websites and internationalization (i18n). (Links and powerpoint here.) The talk was based on my experiences of a smooth operation, created and executed by Zia Consulting.

A crucial part of this i18n process was creating and moving around Excel files containing keys and translations. In addition, there was an Access database and a VB script that converted the keys and translations to properties files. The reason to do this is that the typical Java developer wants to use ResourceBundles for i18n, which typically involves properties files. And the typical translator is much more comfortable with Excel. So, Zia built a process which bridged that gap.

It looks like someone else solved the same problem with translators and Excel files, and open sourced the solution.

Via Rickard.

Updated 2/16, fixed typo and a small formatting change.

[tags]i18n,excelbundle[/tags]