The language file for Foxit Reader 2.2 is unusable

[muntealb]

The much awaited language file for Foxit Reader 2.2 is finally here. There are 1000 new strings, so the translators will have some work to do. But all the time spent translating is really worth it ? Not at this time.

I have translated all the new strings for FR 2.2 in romanian, but unfortunately the new language file is unusable, because the new romanian words do not appear in the interface, they are replaced by their english counterparts.

In my translation the menu titles are "shifted to the left". When a PDF document is opened inside Foxit, the title of the "File" menu is absent and its commands are under the "Edit" title and so on. The tooltips appear in english, and many commands from the menus, although translated in the language file, appear also in english.

My explanation is that there are some missing strings related to the "Advanced" menu that cause the problem.

In the language file, the strings of the menu titles [File, Edit, View, Language, Document, etc.] are in the format :

<popup id="|N" text="&amp;MenuName">

All the menus have a string like that, that appears 4 times in the language file.

For example the "File" and "Edit" menu strings appear 4 times:

<popup id="|0" text="&amp;File">

<popup id="|1" text="&amp;Edit">

The same is true for the "View", "Window", etc. menus.

==================
But the "Advanced" menu string appears only 2 times:

<popup id="|6" text="&amp;Advanced">
====================

Maybe this causes the problems, but I am not sure of this. I tried to add in the language file the instances of the missing strings related to the "Advanced" menu and the problem persists.

The language file is broken, without a doubt. And it should be fixed as soon as possible, because the other free PDF reader/editor does not have these problems with the translations.

[Whiteshark]

Agree 100% muntealb.

The new English.xml file is absolutely broken, trying to use it i get
exactly all what you have described. Reported here http://www.foxitsoftware.com/bbs/showpost.php?p=13408&postcount=4
few hours after the release.

Still no replies from developers :(

[Seanán]

I agree with you Whiteshark and muntealb. That is exactely the problem I have trying to translate the file into Irish. Can Foxit please fix the file so we can translate it properly.


Seanán

[muntealb]

The big problem with the language file of Foxit Reader (FR) is the redundancy of the strings. There are strings that are repeated 3-4 times. I have hoped that in the new file the developers would eliminate this redundancy. It didn't happen and surely this is the cause for the unusability of the language file for FR 2.2.

This is unfortunate because Foxit Reader is a very good software. But today the translations are very important, because everyone uses computers, not only those that know english. So good translations in as many languages as possible guarantees that the software X will have many more users than the software Y, which has bad translations or not at all. Unfortunately for Foxit, its closest competitor (which I will not name here, but was mentioned 1-2 weeks ago in the Downloadsquad blog, and is not from Adobe) has a very good language file. It has not as many translations as Foxit but this may change in the following months, also because there are only 800 strings to translate.

So, we do understand that the developers are working hard for the suite of Foxit products, but they also must understand that up to date translations are good for Foxit. They must provide an usable language file as soon as possible, so that Foxit does not lose marketshare.

[Skiff]

unfortunately the new language file is unusable
Please refer to:
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=6543&page=2

I've attache corrected English.xml - I have found location of error causing strings and corrected them.

At this time I'm checking the rest, but it will take more time, because I'm updating my old polish translation file too.

[muntealb]

Your discovery is good, but it only solves the problem with the shifted menus. However, the Foxit Reader 2.2 english language file has bigger problems, for example the names of the commenting tools and the entire Options panel appear in english, even if they are translated.

For the moment there is no better solution available other than using the translated 2.1 language file. We can only hope that when FR 2.3 will be out, the problems with the english file will be finally solved.

[Skiff]

Yes i.e. <dlgitem id="1144" text="Static"/> the id elements are wrong (not this one - this one is working)
They doesn't "translate" strings, when you switch Foxit to translated version. Simply even "Minimize to tray" string is not translated at all.

More over good example is <dlgitem id="14057" text="Page Rotate:"/> Which doesn't translate string in Printing dialog - in the older version of translation it was:
<dlgitem id="1219" text="Page Rotate:"/> and it is working in 2.2 b2129 and the first one does not working.