Multiligual Database

HI,

I've designed a very complex database (60 tables x 550 fields x about 150
relationships) and have come up against a huge obstacle. The database is
curently designed completely in English but my customer is in Quebec and so
it needs to be bilingual. How in the world can I convert everything structure
and data to be in both languages. Super Simple Examples is in English we say
Mr. or Mrs. and in French we say M. or Mme. for men and women.
This is essential to follow Quebec language laws and something tells me this
will be a gargantuan task :-\

Any help or pointers to scripts or anything will be much apreciated.

ps: I posted here and muti user as I was not certain the more apropriate
group.
--
Bernard Piette

--

Virale, Peut-etre vous avez besoin de faire une satellite pour adaptier au
beaux langues.

"Bernard Piette" wrote:

HI,

I've designed a very complex database (60 tables x 550 fields x about 150
relationships) and have come up against a huge obstacle. The database is
curently designed completely in English but my customer is in Quebec and so
it needs to be bilingual. How in the world can I convert everything structure
and data to be in both languages. Super Simple Examples is in English we say
Mr. or Mrs. and in French we say M. or Mme. for men and women.
This is essential to follow Quebec language laws and something tells me this
will be a gargantuan task :-\

Any help or pointers to scripts or anything will be much apreciated.

ps: I posted here and muti user as I was not certain the more apropriate
group.
--
Bernard Piette

--

Pardon me ? I don't understand your response.
Et oui je comprends le francais :-)

Bernard
--

"Jason S." wrote:

Virale, Peut-etre vous avez besoin de faire une satellite pour adaptier au
beaux langues.

"Bernard Piette" wrote:

HI,

I've designed a very complex database (60 tables x 550 fields x about 150
relationships) and have come up against a huge obstacle. The database is
curently designed completely in English but my customer is in Quebec and so
it needs to be bilingual. How in the world can I convert everything structure
and data to be in both languages. Super Simple Examples is in English we say
Mr. or Mrs. and in French we say M. or Mme. for men and women.
This is essential to follow Quebec language laws and something tells me this
will be a gargantuan task :-\

Any help or pointers to scripts or anything will be much apreciated.

ps: I posted here and muti user as I was not certain the more apropriate
group.
--
Bernard Piette

--

;

"Bernard Piette" wrote:

Pardon me ? I don't understand your response.
Et oui je comprends le francais :-)

Bernard
--

"Jason S." wrote:

Virale, Peut-etre vous avez besoin de faire une satellite pour adaptier au
beaux langues.

"Bernard Piette" wrote:

HI,

I've designed a very complex database (60 tables x 550 fields x about 150
relationships) and have come up against a huge obstacle. The database is
curently designed completely in English but my customer is in Quebec and so
it needs to be bilingual. How in the world can I convert everything structure
and data to be in both languages. Super Simple Examples is in English we say
Mr. or Mrs. and in French we say M. or Mme. for men and women.
This is essential to follow Quebec language laws and something tells me this
will be a gargantuan task :-\

Any help or pointers to scripts or anything will be much apreciated.

ps: I posted here and muti user as I was not certain the more apropriate
group.
--
Bernard Piette

--

Hi Bernard,

Thanks for your posting.

From your descriptions, I understood you would like bilingual interface for
your Access application. If I have misunderstood your concern, please feel
free to point it out.

Unfortunately, I am afraid we could not do this easily with Access. You may
customize code like this to define like below but I believe it will be a
huge job.

Private Sub Form_Load()

If LanguageFlag = "Quebec" then
Me.ComboBoxName.Text="Quebec"
else
Me.ComboBoxName.Text ="English"
endif

End Sub

However, If you want the whole context to be translated, I am afraid Access
is not a good product to do so. Thank you for your patience and cooperation.


Sincerely yours,

Michael Cheng
Microsoft Online Partner Support

When responding to posts, please "Reply to Group" via your newsreader so
that others may learn and benefit from your issue.
================================================== ===
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

How could you possibly design such a database without taking into account
such a requiremnent in the first place?
The first thing I would want to know is the text of the language law. It
seems that would dictate your design.
One of the problems is that you will have to switch character sets because
the french accents will not appear in the Canadian English character set.

At first guess, I would have a table to contain all text displayed in the
application. This table would have three columns: a Key, the English text and
the French text.
All text displayed in the application would come from this table. However,
you will still be left with the character set problem and the problem with
the Microsoft error messages which will be in English unless you can somehow
dynamically switch languages.

-Dorian

"Bernard Piette" wrote:

HI,

I've designed a very complex database (60 tables x 550 fields x about 150
relationships) and have come up against a huge obstacle. The database is
curently designed completely in English but my customer is in Quebec and so
it needs to be bilingual. How in the world can I convert everything structure
and data to be in both languages. Super Simple Examples is in English we say
Mr. or Mrs. and in French we say M. or Mme. for men and women.
This is essential to follow Quebec language laws and something tells me this
will be a gargantuan task :-\

Any help or pointers to scripts or anything will be much apreciated.

ps: I posted here and muti user as I was not certain the more apropriate
group.
--
Bernard Piette

--

Here is a function you could use to determine the language required.
I've included the values for three relevant languages:

Public Function GetLang() As Long
Dim ALid As Long
Dim Lid As MsoLanguageID
ALid = Application.LanguageSettings.LanguageID(msoLanguag eIDUI)
' Lid = msoLanguageIDEnglishCanadian '4105
' Lid = msoLanguageIDFrenchCanadian '3084
' Lid = msoLanguageIDEnglishUS '1033
GetLang = ALid
End Function

You'll need a PC with each supported language to test your database.
-Dorian

"Bernard Piette" wrote:

HI,

I've designed a very complex database (60 tables x 550 fields x about 150
relationships) and have come up against a huge obstacle. The database is
curently designed completely in English but my customer is in Quebec and so
it needs to be bilingual. How in the world can I convert everything structure
and data to be in both languages. Super Simple Examples is in English we say
Mr. or Mrs. and in French we say M. or Mme. for men and women.
This is essential to follow Quebec language laws and something tells me this
will be a gargantuan task :-\

Any help or pointers to scripts or anything will be much apreciated.

ps: I posted here and muti user as I was not certain the more apropriate
group.
--
Bernard Piette

--

There is some basic information abount internationalization in Access he
http://www.fmsinc.com/tpapers/intaa/

-Dorian

"Bernard Piette" wrote:

HI,

I've designed a very complex database (60 tables x 550 fields x about 150
relationships) and have come up against a huge obstacle. The database is
curently designed completely in English but my customer is in Quebec and so
it needs to be bilingual. How in the world can I convert everything structure
and data to be in both languages. Super Simple Examples is in English we say
Mr. or Mrs. and in French we say M. or Mme. for men and women.
This is essential to follow Quebec language laws and something tells me this
will be a gargantuan task :-\

Any help or pointers to scripts or anything will be much apreciated.

ps: I posted here and muti user as I was not certain the more apropriate
group.
--
Bernard Piette

--

Dorian and Micheal,
Thanks for your help with this.
I guess at minimum I could skip the user interface and buttons but the
reports and such will need to come out in two different languages.
An example might be where we do a mail out to prospects, some are french and
some are English and as such we will need two different mail merge documents.
I was thinking I could have a language preference field for English or
French and program a macro to print based on the selection with preformatted
English or French documents.Also,I could include both language choices in my
lookups so if prospect was french checkbox then in my prior example I would
choose the Monsieur prefix from a lookup field.

As for the accents maybe the client will accept that all docs Eng or Fre
could use the same french character set. ... Does this make sense?

ps: Dorien, For your initial question, ...Beginner's Luck I guess and all
communications with client have been only in English for the last four
months. In fact, client isn't even aware of this hurdle yet but I know it
will be a factor in the future which is why I'm working on this now to
prevent a future catastrophe.

Again Thanks and I have rated all your comment's as helpfull.
--



"mscertified" wrote:

How could you possibly design such a database without taking into account
such a requiremnent in the first place?
The first thing I would want to know is the text of the language law. It
seems that would dictate your design.
One of the problems is that you will have to switch character sets because
the french accents will not appear in the Canadian English character set.

At first guess, I would have a table to contain all text displayed in the
application. This table would have three columns: a Key, the English text and
the French text.
All text displayed in the application would come from this table. However,
you will still be left with the character set problem and the problem with
the Microsoft error messages which will be in English unless you can somehow
dynamically switch languages.

-Dorian

"Bernard Piette" wrote:

HI,

I've designed a very complex database (60 tables x 550 fields x about 150
relationships) and have come up against a huge obstacle. The database is
curently designed completely in English but my customer is in Quebec and so
it needs to be bilingual. How in the world can I convert everything structure
and data to be in both languages. Super Simple Examples is in English we say
Mr. or Mrs. and in French we say M. or Mme. for men and women.
This is essential to follow Quebec language laws and something tells me this
will be a gargantuan task :-\

Any help or pointers to scripts or anything will be much apreciated.

ps: I posted here and muti user as I was not certain the more apropriate
group.
--
Bernard Piette

--

Hi,

Thanks for your prompt update.

Yes, I think Dorian's link for "Internationalizing Access Applications" is
very useful and I also save it in my Favorite Folder

If you have any questions or concerns next time, don't hesitate to let me
know. We are always here to be of assistance!


Sincerely yours,

Michael Cheng
Microsoft Online Partner Support

When responding to posts, please "Reply to Group" via your newsreader so
that others may learn and benefit from your issue.
================================================== ===
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.