Researchers make programming breakthrough

Working with the Peking University in China, the North Carolina State University team said it hatched out a tool that translates embedded code more easily and will save developers from hunting through tens of thousands of lines of code for lines that have to be translated.

Tao Xie, an assistant professor of computer science at NCSU said that the tool will fix many of the problems that software makers have getting their code to other countries.

Many software applications are not internationalised until after they are finished. This means that to get software into another country developers have to externalise hard coded constant strings to resource files.

This is a bit of nightmare because not all lines of code need to be translated in to a local language.

The software tool locates the need-to-translate constant strings by making a list of API methods related to the Graphical User Interface (GUI).

The search is then carried out using the API methods based on string-taint analysis.

It has been tested by internationalising four open source applications: RText, Risk, ArtOfIllusion, and Megamek and apparently it all worked.