Language convertor (1 Viewer)

[velox]

i want to make a basic program that converts phrases to a different languages. I want it to translate to 6 langauges and i have 6 phrases. I have a combo box for both, ie for language and for phrase. THen i have a text box for it to display the translated text. I have no idea how to code this, my attempts have only resulted in multiple errors. thanks for any help u can provide!

 

[sunny]

If you tell us what errors you have, we can help you with those.

 

[velox]

well first of all, i dont really know how to code it.....i guessed it, i vageuly remember it but it was all wrong

 

[velox]

how do u fill an array? and where?

 

[Fosweb]

Firstly this is very complicated.

Not only do you have to recognise multiple languages and have a database for each language, if you want it to be useful, you will need to think about grammar...

But if you still are interested:
Build up a database where each english word has its equivalent word in the other languages. Then whenever a phrase is entered, recognise all words, match with corrosponding word in database, slot into new phrase. Easy. But not grammatically correct.


I wouldnt use arrays for this, basically because you will need to keep the same database all the time. Ie: the corrosponding words dont change when you close the program, so it saves time to just use a db rather than write a table from code when you run each translation.

Its basically just some string manipulation and a couple of simple database searches. Dont need arrays.

Thats not to say you couldnt do it with arrays though.

To answer your question on arrays however. (In a VB setting because you see to do vb)

You need to initialise an array in a general declatations area.
eg. Dim MyArray(100) as String
This says the items in the array MyArray (with 100 locations) will be string type.

Then to fill, all you need is a counter which tells you where you are writing to, and then you say: (for this example, a for loop is used to fill 100 locations with the number of the counter)

For arrCount = 0 to 100 (eeerrrr is it 99? whatever figure that out yourself (i'm on a mac atm - no vb))
MyArray(arrCount) = Str(arrCount)
Next arrCount

 

[velox]

sorry i should have stated, it only needs to convert 6 phrases....i did a case statement for the phrase but i can only do one language, i dont know how to do different languages, here is my code so far


Private Sub cmdTranslate_Click()
'added in this button to keep it from doing before your ready.
'case must be in this form

Select Case cmblanguage.Text
Case "French": Select Case cmbgreeting.Text
Case "Good Afternoon": txtdisplay = "1"
Case "Good Evening": txtdisplay = "2"
Case "Good Morning": txtdisplay = "3"
Case "Hello, How are you?": txtdisplay = "4"
Case "What is up?!": txtdisplay = "5"
Case "What is your name?": txtdisplay = "6"
End Select

Select Case cmbgreeting.Text
Case "German": Select Case cmbgreeting.Text
Case "Good Afternoon": txtdisplay = "1"
Case "Good Evening": txtdisplay = "2"
Case "Good Morning": txtdisplay = "3"
Case "Hello, How are you?": txtdisplay = "4"
Case "What is up?!": txtdisplay = "5"
Case "What is your name?": txtdisplay = "6"
End Select
End Select
End Select

End Sub

 

[J0n]

You could use a two-dimensional array, using one dimension as the different languages, and another for the different phrases. If you had one combobox containing the different languages, and one with the phrases, it could be as easy as:

txtDisplay.text = Phrases(cmbLanguage.ListIndex, cmbGreeting.ListIndex)

Where Phrases(X,Y) would be your two-dimensional array where each language would have a different X, and each phrase a different Y.

 

[velox]

cant i do a case within a case? my friend said u could do it and he did, but i cant seem to get it to work.

 

[Winston]

Originally posted by wrx
cant i do a case within a case? my friend said u could do it and he did, but i cant seem to get it to work.

But why would you, JOn's method seems so structured, it's a good solution, you'll have a nested case statement and it would turn out to be a fat block of code.

 

[velox]

ok, but whats the significance of phrases and do i use the comma and is the list index jus the order in which i have typed it in?

 

[velox]

i tried it in vb but i get errors complaining about the comma

 

[J0n]

Did you declare the array? i.e.
Dim Phrases(4,6) as String 'If you have 4 languages and 6 phrases for each language
And then did you populate the array?

 

[velox]

ive declared it however, i dont know how to populate it

 

[Winston]

hmmm i guess you could hardcode the phrases

 

[velox]

i got the array working thanks to u guyz but if i leave the language combo alone and choose a language, i get an error subscript out of range.when i click debug it shows me this

txtdisplay.Text = Phrases(cmblanguage.ListIndex, cmbgreeting.ListIndex)

i thinks its cos there is no list index for the text "greeting" that is displayed in the combo automatically. The text of my combo is greeting. Im not sure how to fix it, i thought i could make it one like the greetings and assign an index to it and then make a msgbox come up. but then it wont show the text when the prgram starts up. thanks guyz

 

[J0n]

Originally posted by wrx
i got the array working thanks to u guyz but if i leave the language combo alone and choose a language, i get an error subscript out of range.when i click debug it shows me this

txtdisplay.Text = Phrases(cmblanguage.ListIndex, cmbgreeting.ListIndex)

i thinks its cos there is no list index for the text "greeting" that is displayed in the combo automatically. The text of my combo is greeting. Im not sure how to fix it, i thought i could make it one like the greetings and assign an index to it and then make a msgbox come up. but then it wont show the text when the prgram starts up. thanks guyz

Actually, i think the default index for the ComboBox is -1, so if you can check for that, you will be able to tell them something like "choose a language/greeting".