Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Translating Applications
Some systems are required to be bilingual or even multilingual, depending on where and how they are
used. Applications are becoming more commonly available on the Internet and users may prefer to
access them in their own language. For example, Google, Hotmail, and even the iPhone are multilingual
since the business market is worldwide.
The translation process has two parts: first the configuration of the parameters, and then the
application translation itself. Applications have to be translated and published every time changes are
made to the primary application so that they can be applied to all the languages.
The first step required to translate an application is to configure the Globalization Attributes. They
are defined in the Shared Components of the application (see Figure 5-4).
Figure 5-4.
Globalization Attributes option
This section is also accessible via the Edit Application Properties and the Globalization tab.
The first thing to do is define the primary application language. To do so, simply choose the
language in the Application Primary Language select list, shown in Figure 5-5. The Application Primary
Language setting is extremely important, since all functionalities will be localized in the chosen
language. This parameter should be set even when translation is not required. By setting this parameter,
sorting, CSV exports, Interactive Reports and APEX messages will be translated and localized for the
primary application. The default value of the Application Primary Language is always English (United
States) (en-us).
The way APEX supports multilingual applications is by creating one copy of the primary application
for each translated version. At run time, this is transparent to the end user. The developer makes
changes to the primary application, and then publishes these to the translated versions. This will be
explained in more detail later in this chapter.
