Multiple Languages in HIP 4.x
On Monday afternoon, Steve Orton and Jeromy Wilson discussed the multilingual features and capabilities of HIP 4.x — and it really looks like they have made some progress in this area.
First of all, the following languages will be supported by 4.1 out of the box: Armenian, Catalán, Chinese (simplified & traditional), English, French (Canada), French (Europe), German, Spanish (just one translation, no mention of Latin America vs. Spain), and Turkish. That means that in the HIP admin tool, you will be able to choose System > Labels > Global Labels (or Agency Labels) to set up HIP to display labels in that language by default, either for your entire organization or agency-by-agency. I say “by default” because the individual portal customization features of HIP 4.x allow for your users — once they are logged into their own portal — to change their own portal to a different language from that list.
If you as the administrator wish to change the wording of a label — in any language — you simply change your administrative tool to that language (File > Language) and then browse a tree of labels for the Launcher or for HIP (or search them by key or value) and make your desired change.
That procedure covers all the “standard” or “default” labels that come with the system. But what if you create a customization — a new tab or subtab, a new display or label — that involves a text label or other text string, and you want to make sure that string will display appropriately in other supported languages? All setup dialog boxes in 4.x that involve entering a custom string will have a new feature — to the right of the text entry box, you will see a small button with a globe icon on it. When you click the globe, you will be able to enter the equivalent values for that string for any and all languages supported by the system. Likewise, in the Portal Admin web interface, creating and labeling a new tab, for example, will pop up a new browser window allowing you to enter the desired labels in other supported languages.
At the beginning of the session, Steve and Jeromy invited us to let them know about other languages that we wished to be supported; they indicated that with this new model for localization, it was a fairly straightforward matter for them to export a list of strings to be translated, pass it along to professional translators for the desired language, then re-import those translated settings back into HIP. As the session went along, quite a few of the questions focused on how customers could be a part of that process. Could there be a way for us to “copy” a translation set so that we could make modifications while leaving the original (default) set for a language in place? If we take the time to customize a translation to meet our needs, shouldn’t there be a way for us to distribute those changes to other customers who might be interested (kind of like we distribute serials prediction patterns, etc.)? Eventually we observed that it sounded from Jeromy and Steve’s description as though SirsiDynix had already created a process to export, modify, and reimport translation sets already. We proposed that they work on a way to expose that process to customers, so that we would be able to copy, modify, distribute, and reimport those translation sets.
Audience members also noted several other localization issues to be considered in association with translations:
- spatial orientation of navigation labels like “previous” and “next” need to change in languages written right-to-left (i.e. “< next | previous >” instead of “< previous | next >“)
- date formats should, in many cases, change in conjunction with a language change
Can you think of any others? Please give us your ideas, because Steve and Jeromy seemed interested in finding ways to optimize localization to serve our needs.
