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Friday, October 9, 2009

Dynamics AX, BING & Language Translation

I was doing some R & D on BING API (Search & Translate) and hit upon the idea of data translation in AX using BING Translate services. Presently when a user changes the AX Language, the Labels change but data does not. It would be nice if this data could also change based on the language change. To do a simple POC, I did some R&D as follows:
1. Create a .NET APP which would consume the BING Translate API to translate text. The simple UI is as follows and works great :-)

2. Replicate this feature inside AX to translate a text inside AX using the BING API and add it as a WS reference . The POC worked and it the simple UI I created is as follows:

3. Now inside AX, create a form and a tmp table and use the API to translate data on the form. I have created a simple UI with 2 Buttons for 2 languages (en) & (ar). When I press the (en) button, the data is displayed in English and when I press (ar) the data is shown in Arabic. I have used a simple Customer Table query for an example. The Screenshot shows the same form side by side with different data translated :)

Comparison...


This obviously is not related to day to day work but just an idea which hit me and I just wanted to explore whether it works. Definitely to achieve this in real life would require architectural changes. Something similar to the UTC DateTime features where the DateTIme is stored in UTC in DB and the AU UI changes based on User settings. ence this POC is just to explore data translation possibilities only. The POC has worked :) and I'm sharing this as is. For creating new data I id not consider, just view. Again this was for some good fun.
To use the BING Apps, you need to create an APP id. Some important reference URL's are:
BING Developer Centre:
http://www.bing.com/developers
Search WSDL for BING : http://api.bing.net/search.wsdl
Translation API for BING : http://api.microsofttranslator.com/V1/SOAP.svc
BING DEV App id: http://www.bing.com/developers/appids.aspx
Steps:
1. Add the WS (
http://api.microsofttranslator.com/V1/SOAP.svc) inside References Node:
2. Sample Code
Static Server Str TranslateData(Str _text = "")
{
Translation.LanguageServiceClient ls;
Str AppId = "Your BING APP ID";
Str FromL="en",ToL="ar",SourceText="";
Str Lang[];
Str Value="";
try
{
new InteropPermission(InteropKind::ClrInterop).assert();
ls = new Translation.LanguageServiceClient();
//ls.GetLanguages(AppId);
Value = ls.Translate(AppId,_text,FromL,ToL);
CodeAccessPermission::revertAssert();
}
catch(Exception::CLRError)
{
throw error(AifUtil::getClrErrorMessage());
}
Return Value;
}
This POC was created just for some serious fun :) . To be taken on the lighter side :)


Click here to see a real implementation of my experiment. This site is in Spanish. Im really happy :-)

1 comment:

j.a.estevan said...

I experimented a few with your idea and make some work aroud automaticaly creating translated labels in AX in a list of languages. My blog is in spanish but attached xpo file is english documented too ;)

Regards.