Since the very first release of the .NET Framework we have been able to build satellite assemblies for (almost) any culture. The critical factor though is that in order to do this either the original assembly must not have been signed or else you must be able to sign your satellite assembly with the same key. Clearly Microsoft will not give anyone the key they use to sign their assemblies so although Microsoft release various language versions of their products we, as consumers of those products, are unable to add our own language versions. This includes but is not limited to the .NET Framework itself, ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight.

I would like your help. I would like to optionally remove the restrictions on loading satellite assemblies. At present the satellite assembly must be signed with the same key as its parent assembly. I would like Microsoft to add a mechanism to the CLR which would optionally allow the author of the assembly to relax the rules on loading satellite assemblies such that it checks that the satellite assembly matches its parent in all criteria *except* for the key with which it is signed.

In this were possible then communities would be able to add support for their own language without waiting for Microsoft to support them. Close to home, this would mean that we could have a Welsh version of the .NET Framework (or ASP.NET MVC). This desire isn't limited solely to getting support for Welsh; the feature would work for all languages (there are ~7000 languages in the world and the .NET Framework 4 supports 23 of them so this affects a community near you).

So here's where I would like your help. If you think this is a useful feature please vote for it on User Voice here.

Thanks.

I wrote a book called .NET Internationalization back in 2006. There is a whole bunch of source code (examples and reusable library code) that accompanies the book that is available for download (you don't need to buy the book to get the source code). I have been keeping the source code up to date with various changes since it was first released and I have just uploaded the most recent version. This blog post describes what's new.

Custom Cultures

I added an example of a new custom culture for Spanish (Chile) Unidad de Fomento, es-CL-CLF, to support the UDF currency in Chile.

Resource Code Generators

I added 3 new code generators for Visual Studio:-

• JavaScriptResourceCodeGenerator - Creates .js files (JavaScript object literals) from .resx files
• JavaScriptAddParentsResourceCodeGenerator - Creates .js files (JavaScript object literals) from .resx files, adds all parents except invariant
• JavaScriptAddAllParentsResourceCodeGenerator - Creates .js files (JavaScript object literals) from .resx files, adds all parents including invariant

Machine Translation

The PseudoTranslator has a new Boolean property, ExcludeMarkup (default is true), where characters that are markup tags (e.g. "<strong>") are not pseudo translated.

The GoogleTranslator is now deprecated because the Google v1 translation API was deprecated by Google in December 2010.

I added Google2Translator for the Google v2 translation API. This is a paid service. See http://code.google.com/apis/language/translate/v2/getting_started.html for details.

Resource Administrator

You can now specify a value for PseudoTranslationCultureInfoName in the App.Config which allows you to change the name of the culture used for pseudo translation.

The GoogleTranslator is no longer used.

The Google2Translator is used if a value for "Google2TranslatorApplicationKey" is set in the App.config file.

If either the MicrosoftTranslator or the Google2Translator are used the remaining translators are disabled (because the Microsoft and Google translators are very reliable).

I fixed a bug where comments were not being preserved in neutral and specific resources when automatic translation was on.

The FileBasedResourcesGovernor now has a new property, Extension, which is the file extension of the files (e.g. ".resx").

ResourceGovernor.ReintegrateResourceSet has various bugs fixed.

Globalization FxCop Rules

I added 2 new rules:-

• DoNotConcatenateLocalizableStrings - identifies code where resource strings are concatenated (use string parameters instead)
• ResourceEntryIsNotUsed - identifies properties in Strongly Typed Resource Classes that are not used

Note that the ResourceEntryIsNotUsed class requires the Strongly Typed Resource

The Translator
I added two new utilities:-

• ReintegrateResources - a command line utility that intelligently reintegrates resources being sent back from the translator
• ResourcePackager - a command line utility that ZIPs and unZIPs .resx files being sent to/from the translator

Enjoy.