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WinCC OA Multilingual Assistant

Idea title​

WinCC OA Multilingual Assistant

Describe your idea​

What problem does this extension solve? WinCC OA supports exporting .ts translation files through its Qt‑based translation system, but the workflow is entirely manual and fragmented.
Teams must:

  • extract strings manually
  • open .ts files in Qt Linguist
  • translate each entry by hand
  • maintain consistency across modules
  • compile .qm files manually
  • re‑import translations into the project

This makes multilingual projects slow, error‑prone, and unrealistic for integrators who need to support multiple languages.
There is no automation, no AI assistance, and no tooling inside VS Code to streamline the process.

Proposed functionality A VS Code extension that provides a complete multilingual workflow for WinCC OA and Qt‑based projects:

  1. Translation Extraction
  • Scan CTRL files for tr("...")
  • Scan QML files for qsTr("...")
  • add user defines function to scan like DebugN
    • Parse existing .ts files
  • Detect missing or outdated translations
  1. AI‑Powered Translation
  • Automatically translate English → target languages
  • Support glossaries for WinCC OA terminology
  • Provide translation suggestions inside VS Code
  • Flag ambiguous or inconsistent translations
  1. Translation Editor Panel
  • Side‑by‑side view: source text, AI suggestion, final translation
  • Approve/override translations
  • Mark entries as “needs review”
  1. Build & Integration
  • Auto‑generate updated .ts files
  • Run lrelease to produce .qm files
  • Validate translation completeness in CI/CD
  • Export translation reports
  1. WinCC OA Project Integration
  • Detect project languages
  • Place .qm files into the correct directories
  • Support module‑level translations
  • Provide commands like:
    • “Extract Translations”
    • “Translate with AI”
    • “Compile Translations”
    • “Open Translation Dashboard”
  1. Unify multi language handling inside WinCc OA projects
  • convert the old message cat format into qt .ts files with current translations
  • Improve functions getCatString, makeError to use the tr() function.
  • remove the old msg catalogs

Additional notes

  • This extension would be the first multilingual automation tool for WinCC OA.
  • It also benefits Qt developers because no similar VS Code extension exists for Qt Linguist workflows.
  • Could integrate with our future ecosystem registry to support multilingual metadata.
  • Potential add‑on: glossary management for SCADA terminology.