Globalize your On Demand Business

Improvements for the end user

1. Selecting translated documents in views: If you do not want end users to see documents that have not been translated, you can modify the view selection formulas to select only documents with a translated status: $Lng_State = "1." If you need to display documents in the source database for testing prior to building you may want to modify the selection formula to $Lng_State = "1" | @IsUnavailable($Lng_State). You may also want to create views to select documents with a $Lng_State of "5." These are the documents that do not require translation (Local and Global documents).
2. View selection formulas in multilingual databases: Because multilingual databases contain documents in many languages, if you want just one language to appear in a given view (as you probably will) it is a good idea to add language selection to the view selection formula. For example: SELECT $Language = "en-US"
3. Selecting document type on compose: If you wish the composer of a document to select whether the document is Local, Global, or Translatable, you can simply add a field to the form definition that sets up the $Lng_SynchType field as appropriate.

Improvements for the translation workflow

1. Views for translators: You are likely to need an "untranslated" view for translators. This should be a view similar to one of your main views, but including a selection formula, such as: SELECT $Lng_State = "0" As you will recall, "0" is the value for untranslated documents. If you want a view for documents that were translated but for which the original has been modified (you could alternatively include these documents in the previous view), you need the following selection formula, which uses the 'modified' value: SELECT $Lng_State = "3". This view might also contain action buttons for changing the state of documents, in particular to change $Lng_State to "1" (translated) or "0" (untranslated). Finally, if you want a view of documents marked for deletion, use this formula: SELECT $Lng_State = "4"
2. Forms for translators: Depending on the content of the documents being translated, and the complexity of the original form used, you may wish to provide a special form for translators. For example, you can create a form that makes editable only those fields that are known to require translation. Alternatively, you may wish to use the original form but restrict editing by translators in this form. Any translator-specific form might also contain action buttons for changing the state of documents, in particular to change $Lng_State to "1" (translated) or "0" (untranslated).

Continue to "Deploying a multilingual Web site"