We have to convert a website to support mulitple languages. The bottlneck here is that the lanaguage translation data will be retrieved from the database.

All the data to be translated is avaliable as a server control so I am thinking of the quickest and cleanest possbile method to achieve this.

Since all my pages inehirt from a BasePage i was thinking of writing something like this in the preRender method of the base page

For each obj in PageControl


obj.text=TranslateText(obj.text,lanaguageid)


end each

But is text property common to all server controls i guess not..

Can ony one think of simpler way to achieve this.

I don't know of the pros and cons, but here is how I did it.
I created a class called langHashTable.vb and this code:

Imports System.Data.OleDb


Imports FCNetlearning.Global





Public Class langHashTable





    Public Shared hashSwe As New Hashtable


    Public Shared hashEng As New Hashtable





    Public Shared Sub FillHashTable()


        hashSwe.Clear()


        hashEng.Clear()


        myConnection.Close()


        Dim myCommand As New OleDbCommand("Select * From LangTbl", myConnection)


        Dim dr As OleDbDataReader


        myConnection.Open()


        dr = myCommand.ExecuteReader


        Dim Swe, Eng As String


        While dr.Read()





            hashSwe.Add(dr.GetString(0), dr.GetString(1))


            hashEng.Add(dr.GetString(0), dr.GetString(2))





        End While


        myConnection.Close()


    End Sub


End Class

I have one Hashtable for each language. In the databasetable I have one key-column and one column for each language. I change language for every component like this:

lbUInst.Text = hashSwe.Item("lbUInst")

where lbUInst is the label and "lbUInst" is the key.

have one Hashtable for each language. In the databasetable I have one key-column and one column for each language. I change language for every component like this:

lbUInst.Text = hashSwe.Item("lbUInst")

I want to avoid doing this. I want to put the translation in one common place like the base page or some http modules...

I am thinking of way to get a property which is common to all the server controls...

Has anyone done something like this?