Globalization Best Practices
The following sections describe best practices for working with Globalization features.
Consider Impact of Translations
If you intend to globalization your system at some point, always design your customizations with translations in mind. Some translations may require Form adjustments, for example.
Add One Culture at a Time
For best results, enable one culture and translate strings for that culture before enabling additional cultures.
Use Lookup Tables for Field Validation
Values for Fields that validate from lists cannot be localized. Use Lookup Tables to ensure that validated values are available to users in all languages.
Benefits include:
- You can apply foreign key support to the validated Fields.
- You can you backfill translated values in existing records.
Use the Content Optimization Tool to easily convert validation lists to Lookup Tables.
Use Small Scopes for Language Packs
While you can create a Language Pack that contains a large set of strings for multiple scopes, you may find it easier to manage multiple Language Packs that have a smaller scope for each target language.
- You can manage translations, particularly reviews, in small batches. This is especially useful if multiple people are performing these tasks.
- You can apply smaller Language Packs more quickly than large Language Packs.
- You can use Language Pack naming techniques to manage the various types of strings that need to be translated.
You can apply Language Packs separately as they are ready, or you can create a Language Pack with an empty scope, and then merge completed Language Packs into it. You can then apply the merged Language Pack at one time.
Create Language Packs that Contain Only Tokens or Rich Text
You may find it useful to translate certain items as a single Language Pack. For example, you may want to create a Language Pack for the Incident scope that contains only Tokens.
To do so:
- Create a Language Pack.
- Open the Language Pack in the Language Pack Editor.
- Verify that the Hide items containing Expression Tokens and Rich Text Strings check box is selected.
- Select all of the visible strings, and then delete them.
- Change the filter to Show only items containing Rich Text strings.
- Select all of the visible strings, and then delete them.
Your Language Pack now only contains Tokens. You can use the Show only items containing Token Expressions filter to view and modify these strings following the guidance in Translating Plain Text Associated with Tokens.