TY - GEN
T1 - Locating need-to-translate constant strings for software internationalization
AU - Wang, Xiaoyin
AU - Zhang, Lu
AU - Xie, Tao
AU - Mei, Hong
AU - Sun, Jiasu
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - Modern software applications require internationalization to be distributed to different regions of the world. In various situations, many software applications are not internationalized at early stages of development. To internationalize such an existing application, developers need to externalize some hard-coded constant strings to resource files, so that translators can easily translate the application into a local language without modifying its source code. Since not all the constant strings require externalization, locating those need-to-translate constant strings is a necessary task that developers must complete for internationalization. In this paper, we present an approach to automatically locating need-to-translate constant strings. Our approach first collects a list of API methods related to the Graphical User Interface (GUI), and then searches for need-to-translate strings from the invocations of these API methods based on string-taint analysis. We evaluated our approach on four real-world open source applications: RText, Risk, ArtOfIllusion, and Megamek. The results show that our approach effectively locates most of the need-totranslate constant strings in all the four applications.
AB - Modern software applications require internationalization to be distributed to different regions of the world. In various situations, many software applications are not internationalized at early stages of development. To internationalize such an existing application, developers need to externalize some hard-coded constant strings to resource files, so that translators can easily translate the application into a local language without modifying its source code. Since not all the constant strings require externalization, locating those need-to-translate constant strings is a necessary task that developers must complete for internationalization. In this paper, we present an approach to automatically locating need-to-translate constant strings. Our approach first collects a list of API methods related to the Graphical User Interface (GUI), and then searches for need-to-translate strings from the invocations of these API methods based on string-taint analysis. We evaluated our approach on four real-world open source applications: RText, Risk, ArtOfIllusion, and Megamek. The results show that our approach effectively locates most of the need-totranslate constant strings in all the four applications.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77949905854&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=77949905854&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ICSE.2009.5070535
DO - 10.1109/ICSE.2009.5070535
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:77949905854
SN - 9781424434527
T3 - Proceedings - International Conference on Software Engineering
SP - 353
EP - 363
BT - 2009 31st International Conference on Software Engineering - Proceedings, ICSE 2009
T2 - 2009 31st International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE 2009
Y2 - 16 May 2009 through 24 May 2009
ER -