polyglot

A self-localizing ResourceBundle that makes use of Google's Cloud API and integrates into JavaFX.

Provide one .properties file (presumably in English, but polyglot has language-detection enabled) and allow your application to be translated into around 100 languages at runtime. With very little to no extra work!

Check out ExampleForm.java for more instructions and tips. If you're interested in using polyglot in your application, get your own Google Cloud API key at https://cloud.google.com. It's free for one year!

Written by Elliott Bolzan for Duke's CS 308 (Design and Implementation).

Use

Using polyglot is simple, and ideally, the experience should be very similar to that of using a ResourceBundle.

1. Instantiate a polyglot object with a Google Cloud API Key and a path to a traditional .properties file.
2. Associate keys from that .properties file to your user-facing text: label.textProperty().bind(polyglot.get("TitleKey"));.
3. To change the language, call polyglot.setLanguage("Language");. Your user-facing text is automatically updated.

Notes:

1. Obviously, polyglot can only translate into languages supported by Google's Cloud API. A list of such languages is available using the languages() command.
2. We recommend that your .properties file only contain user-facing String elements. Paths and numeric values probably won't be translated accurately. Additionally, formatted String elements (%s) probably run a risk in translation.

Advantages

Here are some reasons why you should use polyglot in your application:

1. Instant internationalization. You might be able to localize your project into 5 or 6 languages, based on the origins of the members of your group. That takes time and effort, however. polyglot will give you around 100 languages with very little to no work.
2. Caching. Your user switches the language to Spanish, then to French, and then, back to Spanish. To make the latter switch happen faster (and to prevent unecessary Internet calls), polyglot caches translation results.
3. Case management. Google Translate, in certain languages specifically, can be notoriously bad at returning text in the case it was provided. polyglot allows you to return text in four different cases: UNCHANGED (Google's case and the default for polyglot), UPPER (upper case), LOWER (lower case), and TITLE (great for buttons, titles, and many other user interface items).
4. Ease of use. polyglot lets you retain your old structure: you can keep using a .properties file in English and the workflow associated with it. We take care of the rest!