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Localizing Your Portal

This chapter describes how you can internationalize and localize your portal, and includes the following sections:

 

The Purpose of Localization

Each object can have an alternate name and description for each language that is supported in the portal. When you create an object (for example, a portlet) in the portal, you supply a primary name and description for the object, which displays to users, regardless of their locale choice. However, to accommodate users whose portal interface displays in a different language, you can also supply localized names and descriptions.

For example, if you have an object called "Engineering," then you might have the French translation, "Ingénierie," as the alternate name for that object. So when users log in using the French user interface, they see the object names and descriptions associated with French.

 

Localizing Objects

Although you can supply the localized terms on an object-by-object basis through the object editor, you might find it more efficient to edit all objects at the same time through the Localization Manager.

The Localization Manager allows you to download an .xml file that includes the names and descriptions for all objects that support localized names. Configure each object to allow localization before downloading the .xml file. You can then edit the list and upload it back into the portal.

Enabling Object Localization

To enable the object to be localized:

  1. Click Administration.
  2. Navigate to an administrative folder.
  3. Either edit an existing object (like a content crawler, a portlet, or a job) by clicking an object, or create a new object by selecting an object from the Create Object drop-down list. This launches an object editor.
  4. Complete the configuration properties, including information about locales, according to the online help.

Localizing All Objects

To localize objects using the Localization Manager:

  1. Click Administration.
  2. In the Select Utility drop-down list, click Localization Manager.
  3. In the Localization Manager, click Download.
  4. Save the .xml file to your computer, as prompted.
  5. Use a text editor to edit the entries. For example, to edit the French term, you might make the following change:
    6. <target language="fr">Tous</target>
  6. Save your changes.
  7. In the Localization Manager, click Browse to browse to your edited file, and then click Upload. A message displays at the bottom of the editor as to whether the upload was successful.
  8. Click Finish.

For instructions and a detailed description of any page in the portal, click Help.

Localization Manager XML

Each localized object has an entry in the following format: 

<segment classid="2" itemid="51" stringid="0">
  <source language="en">Everyone</source> 
  <target language="de" /> 
  <target language="en" /> 
  <target language="es" /> 
  <target language="fr" /> 
  <target language="it" /> 
  <target language="ja" /> 
  <target language="ko" /> 
  <target language="pt" /> 
  <target language="zh" /> 
  </segment>

The first line displays information about the object entry:

The second line displays the primary language term (in this example, the primary language is English and the term is Everyone).

The remaining lines display the available languages:

Table C-1 Available Languages
Value
Language
 
Value
Language
de
German
 
ko
Korean
en
English
 
nl
Dutch
es
Spanish
 
pt
Portuguese
fr
French
 
zh
Simplified Chinese
it
Italian
 
zh-tw
Traditional Chinese
ja
Japanese
     

Localizing Each Object

To specify a name and description, language, localized names and descriptions, and properties of this object in the Properties and Names page of the object editor (for instructions on navigating to this editor, see Enabling Object Localization), do the following:

  1. Next to Primary Language, you see one of the following:
    • If the MandatoryObjectLanguage in your portalconfig.xml file has been set, you see the mandatory language. You must supply a name (and, optionally, a description) for this language.
    • If the mandatory language has not been set, you see a drop-down list. Select the language for this object's default name and description.

      • The primary language sets the default language, so users whose locale settings are outside of the supported languages will see the name and description in the primary language you have selected.

  2. Select the Supports Localized Names check box. A new Localized Name and Description section displays, allowing you to add names and descriptions for additional languages.
  3. Under the Localized Name and Description section, click New Localized Name.
  4. In the Name and Description dialog box, type the localized name for this object.
  5. In the Language drop-down list, choose the language for which you are adding a name and description.
  6. In the Description text box, type the localized description for this object.
  7. When you are done, click Finish.

    8. Note: If this object has already been localized into all supported languages, you cannot add more localized names and descriptions. (The new Localized Name button is not displayed.)

 

Internationalizing the Search Service

Unicode characters are used to store and retrieve text, and the system has access to linguistic rules for multiple languages during full-text indexing. This makes it possible to have documents of different languages within the same search collection, with significantly improved results.

The portal provides support for 61 languages. Of these, the following languages include support for word stemming and compound decomposition. This additional information is used to enhance results of the full-text index.

  • Chinese (Simplified)
  • Chinese (Traditional)
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English
  • Finnish
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hungarian
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Norwegian (Bokmal)
  • Norwegian (Nynorsk)
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Turkish
    

The following languages are supported at a reduced level.

  • Afrikaans
  • Albanian
  • Arabic
  • Basque
  • Belarusian
  • Bengali
  • Bulgarian
  • Catalan
  • Cornish
  • Croatian
  • Esperanto
  • Estonian
  • Faeroese
  • Gallegan
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Icelandic
  • Indonesian
  • Irish
  • Kalaallisut
  • Konkani
  • Latvian
  • Lithuanian
  • Macedonian
  • Maltese
  • Manx
  • Marathi
  • Persian
  • Romanian
  • Serbian
  • Serbian-Croatian
  • Slovak
  • Slovenian
  • Swahili
  • Tamil
  • Telugu
  • Thai
  • Ukranian
  • Vietnamese

Displaying International Text in the Portal

All content in the search collection is stored as Unicode characters. The user interface handles text using the UTF-8 encoding, so search results are always displayed correctly, assuming that the appropriate fonts are available to the Web browser.

Searching International Documents

For information on searching international documents, see Search Language.

 

Crawling International Document Repositories

Web and file content crawlers are associated with a specific language. All documents processed by a content crawler are indexed using the linguistic rules appropriate for the specified language. For optimal results, create a separate content crawler to handle documents of different languages. For most European languages, mixing languages within a single crawl will not render the content unsearchable; however, word stemming and decomposition information stored in the documents will be missing for languages other than the content crawler's designated language. Avoid indexing Asian language documents with a content crawler configured for a European language, as special tokenization rules are required for processing the Asian languages.

 

Submitting International Documents to the Knowledge Directory

When you use the Submit Document utility to add documents to the Knowledge Directory, you specify the document language by choosing from a pop-up list of the supported languages. As with content crawlers, this language should be set to the actual language of the document for optimal results. Correct specification of language is particularly crucial for proper indexing of Asian language content.


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