|
String into a
ResourceBundle. However, if you've embedded variable data
in a message, you'll have to take some extra steps to prepare it for
translation.
A compound message contains variable data. In the following list of compound messages, the variable data is underlined:
The disk named MyDisk contains 300 files. The current balance of account #34-09-222 is $2,745.72. 405,390 people have visited your website since January 1, 2009. Delete all files older than 120 days.
You might be tempted to construct the last message in the preceding list by concatenating phrases and variables as follows:
double numDays;
ResourceBundle msgBundle;
...
String message = msgBundle.getString("deleteolder"
+ numDays.toString()
+ msgBundle.getString("days"));
This approach works fine in English, but it won't work for languages in which the verb appears at the end of the sentence. Because the word order of this message is hardcoded, your localizers won't be able to create grammatically correct translations for all languages.
How can you make your program localizable if you need to use compound
messages? You can do so by using the MessageFormat class,
which is the topic of this section.
A compound message
may contain
several kinds
of variables: dates, times, strings, numbers,
currencies, and percentages.
To format a compound message
in a locale-independent manner,
you construct
a pattern that you apply to a
MessageFormat object.
The words in a message usually vary if
both plural and singular word forms are possible.
With the ChoiceFormat class,
you can map a number to a word or phrase,
allowing you to
construct messages that are
grammatically correct.
|
