How to get translation in Umbraco by dictionary key

In this short article, I am going to show the steps needed to get translation in Umbraco CMS by dictionary key using LocalizationService.

It's really easy to play with languages in Umbraco CMS and create a multilingual website.

Defining translations in the Backoffice

I assume that you have already defined translations in the Umbraco admin panel, if not just:

• Login to Umbraco Backoffice
• Go to the Translation section
• Find the Dictionary section.
• Create a dictionary item called "Forms.ContactForm.ThankYouMessage"
• Fill in some text for all Languages (English, Polish, Russian, German) 

Once the dictionary item is there, we can move on.

How to get translation in Umbraco CMS by dictionary key?

You should take following steps:

• Find LanguageId (use your own method here, this is out of the scope of this article)
• Get LocalizationService instance
• Get Dictionary Item by Key ("Forms.ContactForm.ThankYouMessage")
• Find the translation using the current language ID 
• Once, the IDictionaryTranslation object was found - get the value using ".Value" property 

Simple example 

var currentLanguageId = 1;
IDictionaryItem thankYouMessageDictionaryItem = Services.LocalizationService.GetDictionaryItemByKey("Forms.ContactForm.ThankYouMessage");
IDictionaryTranslation thankYouMessageTranslation = thankYouMessageDictionaryItem.Translations.FirstOrDefault(x => x.LanguageId == currentLanguageId);

string thankYouMessage = thankYouMessageTranslation.Value;

Full example  

const string defaultFallbackMessage = "Thank you for your message! We will contact you soon";
// helper method to find the language - use your own implementation
var currentLanguageId = SiteLanguageHelper.GetCurrentLanguage(url); 
IDictionaryItem thankYouMessageDictionaryItem = Services.LocalizationService.GetDictionaryItemByKey("Forms.ContactForm.ThankYouMessage");
IDictionaryTranslation thankYouMessageTranslation = thankYouMessageDictionaryItem.Translations.FirstOrDefault(x => x.LanguageId == (int)currentLanguageId);

string thankYouMessage = thankYouMessageTranslation != null ? thankYouMessageTranslation.Value : defaultFallbackMessage;

Bonus: How to list all languages in Umbraco?

The best way to list all defined languages is to use LocalizationService.

With given LocalizationService instance - use the GetAllLanguages method as follows:

var allLanguages = Services.LocalizationService.GetAllLanguages();

That's it, have a nice translation!