About languages
Poetic can be configured to display in multiple languages. Each language that you want Poetic to be available in must be added to the Poetic instance.
Each instance has a default language. Users can select a language as their preferred language. Each language is also assigned an alternate language to use if the data is not available in the preferred language.
The selected language affects not only how text displays. The display of date information also changes based on the language. This is based on an international standard and occurs automatically in Poetic. For example, when displaying a date range of November 23, 2002 to November 24, 2002:
- In English, the display would be Nov 23, 2002 to Nov 24, 2002 – In Japanese, the display would be 2002/11/23 to 2002/11/24 – In German, the display would be 23.11.2002 to 24.11.2002
Displaying the List Languages page
You add and edit languages from the List Languages page. To display the page:
- On the Administration menu, click Site maintenance.
- On the Site Maintenance menu, click the Customization tab.
- On the Customization tab, click Languages.
Adding or editing a language
On the List Languages page:
- To add a language, click Add a language.
- To edit a language, click the Edit link for the language you want to edit.
The Language Maintenance page displays.
Configuring the language
On the Language Maintenance page:
| Language | In the Language field, type the name of the language. |
| Active |
To make the language available to be selected, check the Active check box. If the language is not active, users cannot select it as their preferred language. |
| Java locale code |
In the Java locale code field, type the first two letters of the Java locale code for the language. These first two letters are the two-letter ISO abbreviation for the language. For a complete list of language codes, see the Unicode web site (http://www.unicode.org). |
| Pub ID |
In the Pub ID field, type the identifier the publisher uses to identify the language. If the publisher does not use a separate identifier, type the Java locale code in the Pub ID field. |
| How to use | In the How to use field, type any additional notes concerning the language. |
| Ask for alternate first or last name in user profile | If speakers of the language use alternate first or last names, then check the Ask for alternate first or last name in user profile check box. |
| Alternate display language | From the Alternate display language dropdown, select the language to use if the text is not available in this language. |
| Character set encoding | From the Character set encoding dropdown, select the method used to encode characters for this language. |
Updating the list value to add the full Java locale code
When you create a language, it is added to the LOCALIZATION_LANGUAGE list so that you can localize the names of the languages.
If the language is not a standard language (for example, Traditional Chinese is a special version of Chinese), and requires the complete Java Locale Code (for example, zh_TW for Traditional Chinese instead of just zh) in order for localization to work correctly, then you need to edit the list value to add the full Java locale code to the Custom 3 field for the value. See Editing and localizing list values for details on how to edit lists.