Bests practices for localized texts in C++ cross-platform applications?

Question

In the current C++ standard (C++03), there are too few specifications about text localization and that makes the C++ developer\'s life harder than usual when working with lo

Answer 1

I strongly disagree with the accepted answer. First, the part about using static array lookups to speed up the text lookups is counterproductive premature optimization - Calculating the layout for said text and rendering said text uses 2-4 orders of magnitude more time than a hash lookup. If anyone wanted to implement their own language library it should never be based on static arrays, because doing so trades real benefits (translators don't need access to the code) for imaginary benefits (speed increase of ~0.01%).

Next, writing your own language library to use in your own game is even worse than premature optimization. There are some extremely good reasons to never write your own localization library:

1. Planning the time to use an existing localization library is much easier than planning the time to write a localization library. Localization libraries exist, they work, and many people have used them.

2. Localization is tricky, so you will get things wrong. Every language adds a new quirk, which means whenever you add a new language to your own homegrown localization library you will need to change code again to account for the quirks. Did you know that some languages have more than 2 plural forms, depending on the number of items in question? More than 2 genders (more than 10, even)? Also, the number and date formats vary a lot between different in many languages.

3. When your application becomes successful you will want add support for more languages. Languages nobody on your team speaks fluently. Hiring someone to write a translation will be considerably cheaper if they already know the tools they are working with.

A very well known and complete localization library is GNU Gettext, which uses the GPL, and should therefore be avoided for commercial work. You can instead use the boost library boost.locale which works with Gettext files, and is free to use and modify for commercial and non-commercial projects of any kind.