Translating Properties Files

Java components of PeopleTools, such as the servlets on the web server, derive some strings from Java-style properties files. Java properties files are simple text files that are read at runtime by the servlet; these files contain strings that are displayed to the user, typically in error messages.

These files can be translated using any standard text editor, and are located on the web server. This table show the files that contain translatable text:

Base Properties File	Translated Properties File
text.properties	text_language_code.properties
errors.properties	errors_language_code.properties

The base version of the file (without a language code) contains the English version of the strings. Copy this file to a new file containing the language code of your target language before translating the contents. For example, if you are translating the resources into Quechua, you would create text_QUE.properties and errors_QUE.properties, and update these files with Quechua translations of the contents.

See Understanding the Addition of New Language Definitions.

When translating into a language that cannot be represented by the Latin-1 character set, such as Japanese, Chinese and Korean, the contents of the Java properties files must be converted into escaped Unicode character references. The Java Development Kit (JDK) contains the native2ascii utility that you can use to convert Unicode character references in a Java properties file into a native character set and vice versa. Refer to the native2ascii utility documentation in the JDK for more information.