This example provides the user a means to immediately change languages on all open forms at the click of a button. It is currently designed to flip between two languages (in this case English and French), but with some simple modifications, could be extended to support additional languages. Note that only captions are translated… text entered by a user remains exactly as typed.
Captions for both languages are maintained in a table called tblTranslations. When the button is clicked to change languages, the code locates all controls on all open forms that have associated captions, then retrieves the translated caption text from the tblTranslations table.
Should the developer add new controls on a form (buttons, labels, etc… anything with a caption), without adding the other language, the next time the form is displayed, the database will determine there is a new control, then store the current caption text, and flag the text for the other language as “<Missing caption>”. That way the developer only needs to update those captions in the tblTranslations table.
Click here to download this example.