The short version of this story is that OnTime Language packs are now available for OnTime V6.1.2.  You can download them here.  But the following story is a bit interesting and might be really useful if you're looking to do any localization...

A few months ago, Dan Suceava, the Senior Software Engineer on the OnTime development team posted a blog entry about Localizing OnTime.  OnTime was designed from the ground up with localization in mind, but for the most part, it was on the back of our minds, not on the forefront.  After the introduction of OnTime 2006, we felt we had delayed the release of localized versions of OnTime long enough.  We've had requests for localized versions of OnTime since V1 and we had put it off in favor of other features as long as we could.  We are now past V6 and OnTime is extremely feature-rich - localization has been a little overdue.

Before we started with the translations, Dan decided it would be a good idea to see where the problem areas were.  There were a lot of unknowns...Had we used any direct strings rather than using resource files?  Had we sized labels and buttons way too small when they should have been just a tad bit bigger to fit translated versions?  Had we created multiple resource entries for the same string?  Were there other issues that we simply didn't know about?  Yes, Yes, Yes and Yes were the answers. 

To help the team quickly identify problem areas, Dan whipped up a VS.NET add-in that takes resource files and translates them to whatever language you want using Google's translation services.  WOW!  This tool is cool!  It's beyond cool - it's the ultimate testing tool for any developer doing localization work.  You don't have to wait days or weeks for your human translator to return translated strings.  In just seconds, you can have a rudimentary version of translated strings for testing purposes.  If that wasn't enough, the tool goes further and also identifies duplicate strings that you've created different resources for.  Now that's a money-saving feature since most translators charge by the number of words they translate.

Now here is the really cool part.  We decided to make this tool available for free to anyone who wants it.  We're even including the source.  Here is a link to download this ResxHelper tool (complete with C# source code - written for .NET 1.1):

Download ResxHelper.Zip - Google-Based Translation Add-In for VS.NET

It goes without saying that you will need native translators to do the real work, but the above tool is a great way to easily find the major issues; like which strings are not using resources and whether or not your menu control will work once it's translated to Japanese.  By the time we started working with our native-speaking translators, most of the major resource-related issues were resolved.

There are a number of other issues too that we decided not to tackle with this version.  For example, the OnTime installer, product documentation and sample databases will all be English-only.  The Axosoft web site itself will also be English only for the near future.  Although it would be nice to have all of these issues resolved, having the main application in the local languages sooner rather than later is very beneficial to our customers - especially the German, Spanish, French and Japanese speaking customers as of right now :-)