Design considerations for localization
With careful attention to design, a Pega Platform™ application can support users who work in different languages or who use languages or alphabets that sort text values (such as customer names) according to language-specific conventions, rather than American English conventions.
Pega Platform has the Localization landing page in App Studio that automates many of the steps necessary to create language-specific versions of your application. When creating a language pack in App Studio, Pega Platform identifies text strings that are used in user interface Rules. Text strings that you can localize includes labels, captions, tooltips, and instructions that appear in user-facing components, such as Views and portals.
Properties with more than one value
Provide your localization team with access to all properties and ensure that no element of your interface remains untranslated. When generating a translation package, the system omits local properties that have multiple values, such as properties associated with picklists. You can add these properties to the translation package manually by editing their localization file in Dev Studio.
Note: For more information on editing the localization file manually in Dev Studio, see Localizing properties with more than one value.
Dynamic values
Your application may use dynamic values to replace a placeholder value in a phrase, such as using the customer's name in the user interface when that customer has logged in to the application. Localize phrases that use dynamic values to improve the user experience of people who use your application in languages other than the original. For example, if your application's welcome page includes a Good morning, {@P .userName}! dynamic phrase with a {@P .userName} dynamic value, you can localize the content of the pyMessages Rule that manages such phrases.
Note: For more information on adding phrases with dynamic values to the localization package, see Localizing dynamic values.
Paragraph Rules for text
Paragraph Rules make content reusable. Instructions on a UI form, copyright declarations, and privacy notifications are all examples of reusable paragraph Rules. Paragraphs longer than 64 characters can remain intact as boilerplate content and easily applied multiple times in an application.
For example, the instructions at the top of the form translated into Spanish are reusable in several areas of the application. In the center of the following image, drag the vertical line to see the instructions at the top of the form translated from English into Spanish:
Paragraph Rules that hold Step instructions require manual translation, and the text is stored in the corresponding translation Ruleset.
The translation ZIP package includes the paragraph\base file that contains the source for paragraph Rule text. You can localize the paragraph Rules by updating the text in the files in the paragraph\translated folder. For example, you can open the file in a plain text editor and replace the text in the <p> tags. Upload the compressed folder containing the translated paragraph values, change the locale, and run the application to view the translated text.
Note: You can use any text editor to edit the HTML translation file to insert the translated text.
Controls sourced from Data Pages
In Constellation, the translation package does not automatically include the text from radio buttons and drop-down controls that use Data Pages. Because Data Pages are empty when the system generates the translation package, you must add their content manually. To ensure that your interface does not include untranslated picklists and radio buttons, add the controls that source entries from Data Pages to the translation package. In the Additional text tab of the Localization landing page, find the Data Page related to the control that you want to localize, and edit the record to populate the Data Page with the values that you want to localize by entering each value in a separate row. Then rebuild and import the translation package.
For example, a vehicle loan application includes a Vehicle type picklist that lists the following vehicle types: car, van, truck, and motorcycle. The vehicle types are sourced from the D_AutoLoanList Data Page. To include the Vehicle type values in the translation package, edit the associated Data Page record in App Studio > Settings > Localization > Additional text tab as shown in the following image:
Note: If the Data Page that you want to localize is not referenced in any View, create the Rule for that Data Page manually. For more information, see Creating localization Rules manually.
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