Language Translation Overview using Translation Manager

[harsha_ganapathy]

  

Applies to:  SAP Business Objects XI3.1 - Translation Manager.

Summary : The purpose of this document is to define the generic process and guidelines that should be followed in Business Objects XI 3.1 for language translation using Translation Manager.

Translation Manager - An Introduction

The Translation Manager (TM) is a tool used to translate documents (Web Intelligence reports and Universe) from one language to various other languages.  The Translation Manager (TM) translates only Universes and Web Intelligence documents.

The tool provides a simple graphical interface for easy and simple translations.  It can collaborate with external translation tools by exporting and importing XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format) files - the XML format for exchanging localization data. 

In general, we can create one document and translate it into multiple languages. The tool uses a common terminology called as locale.

Language Types in Translation Manager

The Translation Manager uses several specific language types. The most frequently used ones are:

•   Product Language - The language in which the entire application appears.
•   Preferred Viewing Language (PVL) - The preferred viewing language by the user while working with any of the application (InfoView, Web   Intelligence rich client).
•   Substitution (Fallback) Language - The language that displays by default when the viewing language or preferred viewing language is not available.
•   Source Language – It is the Original Content language of the document.

Translation Methods

Translation Manager supports the following translation methods:

•    In-House Translation – In this method, the translation of text is done by the user directly in the Editor View of the Translation Manager Tool.
•    Third-Party Translation – Here, the tool allows user to import and export the documents in the industry standard XLIFF file format (XML Localization Interchange File Format). This file can be later used to translate the documents using third party tools.

Translation Process

   Translation process consists of the following steps.

• Universe Translation
• Web Intelligence Report Translation
• Administrative setting change: Client Tier - User Interface Translation

  Universe Translation- A step by step solution

• Login to the Translation Manager Tool with appropriate credentials.

• Go to, File menu – Open the Universe from local repository or Import from CMS to translate. This will list all the classes and objects and respective descriptions in the Original Content Language.

• At the bottom of the screen, look for Language Management panel. In the Language Management - > Available Languages panel, Select the required languages for translation from Language Management view by moving them from Available Language to Selected Languages.

• Select the object to be translated and in the Text Editor Pane, give the equivalent translated text in Text Editor View for Name and Description
  and then click Apply. Ensure the “Ready for Use” check box is checked.

• All the translated data will be listed under Text Editor Pane of the new language. Right click on the language converted object to launch ‘Change Status’ window. This is used to set the Translation Status. In order to ease collaborative work between designers and translators, some statuses can be assigned to each item to be translated. Translation Manager proposes 10 statuses. These statuses are used to tag that the translation must not been displayed publicly and need to remain among designers and translators for internal process, such as review.

• Repeat previous step for all the selected languages.
• Save and export the universe to CMS. Any report that is generated out of this universe can be shown either in English or newly added language based on the user’s InfoView settings.

Note:  If you are not using the SAP Business Objects Translation Manager to translate (In-House Translation), Translation Manager allows you to translate the documents using Third Party tools by saving the document structure in XLIFF standard format. Select Fileà Export to XLIFF. Click Next. It creates an XLIFF file in the XLIFF destination folder. Import the file from any third party tool and start translating.

On importing the Universe into Translation Manager, the following elements can be translated.

• Context Names
• Class Name & Class Description
• Number and Date Formats
• Prompt Names
• Hierarchies

Web Intelligence Report Translation

The sequence of steps followed to translate a Web Intelligence report is exactly same as Universe translation.  Here, first we import the Web intelligence
report and then start off with translation.

  On importing the report into TM, the following elements can be translated.

• Query Name
• Prompt
• Alerters
• Report Tab Names
• User defined variables

Cl   Client Tier – InfoView Preferences

In the InfoView Preferences page, there are two settings that allow users to define their preferred language settings.

• Product Locale (PL): This defines the user interface (UI) language for InfoView, Web Intelligence, and other Business Objects applications.
• Preferred Viewing Locale (PVL): This determines what language will be used to display multilingual strings in universes.

  If specified language is not available in the universe, then the default source language will be used.

         Format Translation

           Format translation can be achieved by setting it under InfoView Preferences.

        With the preference, “Use my preferred viewing locale to format the data” we can make sure that the below formats are translated automatically.

• Currency format
• Number Format
• Percentage Format
• Date & Time Format

Data Tier Translation

• No explicit translation is required for the report data. Multilingual  strategy should be applied at the database level i.e. for every column in English;
  corresponding column of the other language should be defined.
•   For instance, in the Country table, the column for Country description should be defined both in English and French. The English column, named as ‘Country_Name_Desc_En' will hold the Country description in English and the French column as ‘Country_Name_Desc_Fr' will hold the Country description in French.
• At the Universe level, two objects should be created for both English and French database columns as <Field_Name>_En and <Field_Name>_Fr.
• In report query, use both English and French Fields. In the Web Intelligence Report, display the English or French field by checking the language
  settings of the user and display the data in the appropriate language using the formula.

           ‘If GetPreferredViewingLocale() = "fr_CA" Then [Country _Name_Desc_Fr] Else [Country   _Name_Desc_En]’

Report Text Translation

• The components which cannot be translated using Translation Manager Tool can be  translated at the report level.This is called dynamic translation since translation occurs during report runtime based on the locale.
• User variables have to be created as shown below, to check the language settings of the user and display the
  text in the appropriate language.

            Example:

            Var_Lang_<FieldName>=If GetPreferredViewingLocale() = "fr_CA" Then <French Field Name> Else <English Field Name>

             For example: = If GetPreferredViewingLocale() = "fr_CA" Then “Rapport ID:”  Else "Report ID:”

Limitations of Translation Manager Tool

1. Only  Universe and Web Intelligence documents can be translated.
2. Chart labels are image file in the Web Intelligence Report. So, a workaround to translate the Chart labels is to suppress the Label of the chart and use a
   text box. Else give a custom label for the chart having multiple languages.

          For Eg:      1) English_Chart_Name/German_Chart_Name
                             2)Total Sales/Gesamtumsatz

   3.   Input Control Name is a static value. So,the name cannot be translated. Workaround would be to have the label displayed in all required languages like English_InputControl_Name/German_InputControl_Name

   4.   In  InfoView/SAP Portal, Report Name and Report Description will be coming in Default installation Language. The impact is on InfoView users only and currently we have no reasonable workaround

New in BI 4.0

Translation Manager is rebranded as 'Translation Management Tool'

Translatable Resource Types in BI 4.0

• Web Intelligence reports.
• Universes created by the universe design tool.
• Data Foundations or Business Layers created  with the information design tool (IDT).
• Crystal Reports for Enterprise documents (but not documents created with the C++ designer) – Reports created with BI 4.0
• Dashboards created with Dashboard Design - Created with BI 4.0
• Workspaces created with BI workspace and most InfoObjects.