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Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a new tool that will aid the translation of software into other languages.
Breakthrough tool makes translating software easier. Image: Rockstar Games.
In combination with scientists from Peking University, the North Carolina State team have developed software which "...identifies those pieces of software code that are designed to appear on-screen and communicate with the user (such as menu items), as opposed to those pieces of code that govern how the program actually functions," according to a NC State news release.
Previously programmers needed to examine thousands of lines of code to identify all commands that appear on a user's screen -- a time-consuming and expensive exercise.
"This is a significant advance because it saves programmers from hunting through tens of thousands of lines of code," said Dr. Tao Xie, an assistant professor of computer science at NC State.
"Productivity goes up because finding the 'need-to-translate' strings can be done more quickly," he added. "The quality also goes up, because there is less chance that a programmer will make a mistake and overlook relevant code."
The research was backed by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Army Research Office. It will be presented in May at the International Conference on Software Engineering in Vancouver, Canada, and published in the proceedings of the conference, said the university statement.
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