Model Localization

Home > Model Development Topics > Model Localization

This topic describes how to provide translations for model-specific run-time messages.

Related topics

• Multilingual Support forthcoming content

Topic contents

• Quick start
• How model finds translated message
• Model developer: How to mark strings for translation in model code

Quick Start

You can provide translated messages for your model by editing modelName.message.ini file located in the same directory where modelName.exe is.

For example:

dir /B openmpp_win_20180205\models\bin
....
modelOne.exe
modelOne.ini
modelOne.message.ini
modelOne.sqlite

modelOne.message.ini is translated messages for modelOne.exe

Message.ini file must be UTF-8 encoded and it contain model translated messages:

;
; modelOne localized messages
;

[FR]
Run %d = Exécution: %d

[fr-CA]
Run %d = Exécution: %d
;
; Example of multi-line translated message:
;
"Scenario processing" = "\
  Traitment \
  du scénario\
  "

[en]
; Model = Model

If translation the same as original message you can exclude it, e.g.: Model = Model is not required.

[back to topic contents]

How model finds translated message

At start model determine list user preferred languages. For example if current environment is French Canadian and model default language is EN then language list will be: (fr-ca, fr, en).

User language preference can be changed in Windows Control Panel or by Linux LANG environment variable. You can override environment language by using model command-line or ini-file argument:

modelOne.exe -OpenM.MessageLanguage es-EC

To find translated message model does lookup in:

• path/to/model.exe/modelName.message.ini
• path/to/model.exe/common.message.ini
• $OM_ROOT/common.message.ini
• $OM_ROOT/models/common.message.ini
• database table model_word
• database table lang_word

Search done in above order and in the order of user preferred languages, first translation found is used. For example if there is translation of word Success exist in modelName.message.ini, in common.message.ini and in lang_word database table then modelName.message.ini translation is used.

For example, if modelOne.message.ini is same as above, common.message.ini is:

[fr]
All: %d = Toute : %d

and database table model_word contains entry:

fr-CA  Done.  Fini.

Then model messages in French Canadian environment can be similar to:

2014-03-17 17:14:24.023 Model: modelOne
2014-03-17 17:14:24.070 Exécution 101
2014-03-17 17:14:24.123 Toute : 456
....
2014-03-17 17:14:24.179 Fini.

As you can see for current user language fr-CA model found 3 messages translated in "generic fr" French: "Exécution", "Toute" and "Fini", however "Model" still untranslated. To fix this you can update modelOne.message.ini by adding:

[fr-CA]
Model = Modèle

Then result would look like:

2014-03-17 17:14:24.023 Modèle: modelOne
2014-03-17 17:14:24.070 Exécution 101
2014-03-17 17:14:24.123 Toute : 456
....
2014-03-17 17:14:24.0179 Fini.

[back to topic contents]

Model developer: How to mark strings for translation in model code

Omc model compiler automatically include first "const char *" argument of

• theLog->logMsg("some message");
• theLog->logFormatted("some format %d %g %s",....);
• macro LT("some message")
• WriteLogEntry("some message");
• WriteDebugLogEntry("some message");
• WarningMsg("some message");
• ModelExit("some message"); into output model.message.ini file, which can be used as translation starting point.

If your source code directory already contains translated code/model.message.ini then such file is merged with newly added model messages into output bin/model.message.ini, which you can forward to translation team.

It is possible to use macro LT("something") in order to build concatenated message, however LT is "strictly inline" because it returns temporary const char * pointer. As result following will crash your model:

const char * myBadDay = LT("nice day");
if (myBadDay .... // memory access violation, model crash

How to avoid string concatenation. String concatenation considered as bad practice by any translation guide. For example, if you have something like:

string msg = LT("Table has ") + std::to_string(rowCount) + LT(" rows");
theLog->logMsg(msg.c_str());

then try to replace it with:

theLog->logFormatted("Table has %d rows", rowCount);

Non-translatable strings. Not every output in your model you want to translate For example, you may don't want to translate your model trace output:

WriteDebugLogEntry(NO_LT("------------"));
WriteDebugLogEntry(NO_LT("{1, 2, 3, 4}"));
WriteDebugLogEntry(NO_LT("------------"));

Please use NO_LT macro to disable unnecessary translation.

[back to topic contents]