NavTranslator for Microsoft Dynamics NAV object files

📖 Description

The PowerShell module works as addition to Dynamics NAV Development Shell and helps translating Dynamics NAV objects in a convenient and automated manner. It works from PowerShell console and provides an efficient user interaction interface. Featuring own CSV file dictionary and power of DeepL, translation to Dynamics NAV objects has never been easier.

🔎 How it works

The process is performed semi-automatically. You provide three parameters:

• Path pointing to the folder where the objects for translation are located.
• BaseLanguageId as a language id which will be used for making translations from.
• WorkLanguageId as a language id which will be checked and updated.

Where every *LanguageId is the integer number representing Windows Language Code. Read more here: https://www.venea.net/web/culture_code. To get the list of Windows languages and codes, run in PowerShell:

Get-Culture -ListAvailable | Select-Object LCID, Name, DisplayName, ThreeLetterWindowsLanguageName, ThreeLetterISOLanguageName, TwoLetterISOLanguageName | Out-GridView

• The NavTranslator finds all the Dynamics NAV TXT format objects recursively within the given Path. Every object is tested for missing translations based on the settings provided. In case of missing translations an existing translation will be shown and user will be asked to enter translation manually (when DeepL is not selected to use). When you selected to use DeepL, NavTranslator will ask DeepL API for translation first before asking user.
• You will be asked to confirm every new translation. You can edit it, or keep the original value.
• Finally, all missing translations will be imported to the object file.
• Every file is processed separately, so you can stop the process at any time.

📗 Dictionary

A simple CSV file dictionary is used to store, reuse and add new translations in the .\.dictionary\ folder. The dictionary is created automatically when it is not found and will be filled with all confirmed translations and saved when translation is complete. During the process, the dictionary will be checked for every translation. Existing dictionaries will be reused every time the matching language settings (BaseLanguageId, WorkLanguageId) were given.

🈸 DeepL

DeepL is a translation service which provides a free REST API (https://www.deepl.com/pro-api). To use it, you need to acquire an API key. When you start with NavTranslator, if confirmed, API key will be checked automatically from .\.deepl\apikey.xml path. If key is not found, you will be asked to enter it. The API key will be stored in the encrypted file format that is only possible to read by the current user on the current machine. Read more here: import-clixml and export-clixml.

💬 Usage

🔑 Preconditions

1. At least PowerShell 6.2 is installed.
2. Dynamics NAV is installed with Development Shell option.
3. Dynamics NAV objects are exported as TXT.
4. (Optional) Make sure Dynamics NAV objects contain the Base language names or captions as they would be the base for translation. If they do not exists, they will be added automatically assuming that ENU is a base DevelopmentLanguageId (more about this).

🛠 Setup & Run

1. Clone this repository (if you have Git), or download ZIP and unpack.
2. Open PowerShell and CD into the cloned folder.
3. Depending on your Dynamics NAV version, check path to Microsoft.Dynamics.Nav.Model.Tools is correct in NavTranslator.psm1 module (configured for Dynamics NAV 2018 version by default).
4. Run Import-Module .\NavTranslator.psm1 -DisableNameChecking -Force
5. Run Start-TranslationProcess with your parameters

Important

❗Expected encoding is UTF8: for NAV objects, translations, dictionary.

❗Dynamics NAV objects within the -Path parameter will be updated without prior user confirmation. Consider to backup first.

💡 Example

Stan is a Dynamics NAV developer who wants to translate NAV objects from English to German on his machine. He has a Dynamics NAV database with English (ENU) as a base language and a DeepL account.

• NavTranslator unzipped to C:\Temp\NavTranslator
• NAV objects were exported to C:\Temp\Objects folder, and are in UTF8 encoding
• ENU Language layer is existing for NAV objects and/or expected as base DevelopmentLanguageId

Stan opens PowerShell and runs the following commands:

Set-Location C:\Temp\NavTranslator\
Import-Module .\NavTranslator.psm1 -DisableNameChecking -Force
Start-TranslationProcess -Path .\Objects -BaseLanguageId 1033 -WorkLanguageId 1031

Results:

• The script has found all the objects and helped Stan with translation.
• Files under .\Objects were updated.
• DeepL API key was created .\.deepl\ApiKey.xml.
• Dictionary was created .\.dictionary\ENU_DEU.csv.
• Dictionary was automatically reused for the same translations and saved under .\dictionary.

🍀 Contribution and feedback

Suggestions and ideas are highly welcomed and appreciated. Feel free to open a new discussion, Issue, or Pull Request.

You can also ☕ buy be a coffee to say ❤ thanks.

---

📢 Legal Notice

• Licensed under the MIT license.
• Microsoft Dynamics NAV (or Dynamics NAV) is a registered trademark by Microsoft Corporation or Microsoft group of companies.
• DeepL is a registered trademark of DeepL SE, Maarweg 165, 50825 Cologne, Germany