First of SSRS reports expose a global parameter [User!Language] which reflects the user's primary language (top of list in IE). This is very helpful because it's not possible to find this out client-side in Javascript (after much trying!). It's only available as a server-side parameter.
Secondly, thanks to Google's TranslateAPI, you can automate a 'rough-cut' translation for the labels and tooltips which you will want to be language-sensitive.
Thirdly, in reports you can substitute your 'hard-coded' label for an embedded function call to retrieve something that is language-sensitive. Although it's a little annoying that you must pass into this function any references as the functions are operating in a 'sandbox'. Anyway, A decision I made was to store all the translations in the report RDL itself, rather than in the database - this might not be best for everyone. The translations can be stored as hidden parameters and retrieved by the embedded function.
eg.
You've got all the tips now, but it still seems some work to do a number of reports. So the job really comes down to mechanising the whole operation, and for that I can show some code I used. Credit must go to all the sources I used to find most of the techniques, of which there were several.
Anyway I knocked up a utility to load up the RDL DOM, make a nodelist of the labels and tooltips and substitute the function call, whilst taking the previously existing (en) text, 'Googlising' it into 5 other languages and storing it as hidden parms.
Voila. Enjoy!
XmlDocument xml = new XmlDocument();
xml.Load(sFile);
//temporarily remove default namespace to avoid excess references
//also simplifies the code considerably!
string defns = xml.DocumentElement.NamespaceURI;
xml.LoadXml(xml.OuterXml.Replace("xmlns=\"" + defns + "\" ", ""));
XmlNode code = xml.SelectSingleNode("//Code");
if (code == null)
{//then make this node
XmlNode ds = xml.SelectSingleNode("//DataSets");
code = xml.CreateElement("Code");
xml.DocumentElement.InsertBefore(code, ds);
}
if (! code.InnerText.Contains("Public Function GetLabel"))
{//then add required function
code.InnerText += "Public Function GetLabel(Lang as String, P as Parameter, Label as String) as String" + Environment.NewLine;
code.InnerText += "Dim i As Integer" + Environment.NewLine;
code.InnerText += "For i = 0 to Ubound(P.Value)" + Environment.NewLine;
code.InnerText += "If (P.Value(i) = Left(Lang,2) + \"_\" + Label) Then Return P.Label(i)" + Environment.NewLine;
code.InnerText += "Next i" + Environment.NewLine;
code.InnerText += "Return Label" + Environment.NewLine;
code.InnerText += "End Function";
}
XmlNode parms = xml.SelectSingleNode("//ReportParameters");
XmlNode parm = parms.SelectSingleNode("//ReportParameter[@Name='Labels']");
if (parm == null)
{//then make this node
parm = xml.CreateElement("ReportParameter");
parms.AppendChild(parm);
XmlAttribute nm = xml.CreateAttribute("Name");
nm.Value = "Labels";
parm.Attributes.Append(nm);
parm.InnerXml = "
parm.InnerXml += "
parm.InnerXml += "
parm.InnerXml += "
parm.InnerXml += "
}
XmlNode defvals = parm.SelectSingleNode("DefaultValue/Values");
XmlNode valvals = parm.SelectSingleNode("ValidValues/ParameterValues");
string[] lang = { "en", "it", "fr", "de", "nl", "es" };
Language[] lenum = { Language.English, Language.Italian, Language.French, Language.German, Language.Dutch, Language.Spanish };
XmlNodeList lbls = xml.SelectNodes("//Textbox/Value|//Textbox/ToolTip");
foreach (XmlNode lbl in lbls)
{
if (! lbl.InnerText.StartsWith("="))
{
string def = lbl.InnerText;
lbl.InnerText = "=Code.GetLabel(User!Language, Parameters!Labels, \"" + def + "\")";
for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++)
{
XmlNode defval = xml.CreateElement("Value");
defval.InnerText = lang[i] + "_" + def;
defvals.AppendChild(defval);
XmlNode valval = xml.CreateElement("ParameterValue");
valval.InnerXml = "
valval.InnerXml += "";
valvals.AppendChild(valval);
}
}
}
//add back the default namespace
XmlAttribute rdef = xml.CreateAttribute("xmlns");
rdef.Value = defns;
xml.DocumentElement.Attributes.Prepend(rdef);
xml.Save(sFile);
