Language translation for multi-byte languages

> Language translation for multi-byte languages

Language translation for multi-byte languages

The Asian languages (i.e. Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.) are intrinsically different than those with Latin-based characters (single-byte languages), as they each far exceed the 256 character limit. Therefore these require multi-byte encoding to distinguish all of the characters in any of those languages.

You can activate a multi-byte language provided you configure your regional settings and database collation appropriately, before activating the language inside SYSPRO.

In addition, if you define the appropriate XML encoding, you can produce SRS reports containing both English and other language characters, and third party applications will be able to interact with business objects sending and receiving those characters.

Regional settings (client side)

Within your regional settings you need to configure your system locale with the multi-byte language required. This must be done for each workstation that requires entering/displaying the characters of that language.


The system locale determines the default character set used when displaying text in programs that do not support Unicode (Unicode is a character encoding standard that defines a set of letters, numbers and symbols that represent almost all the written languages in the world). Selecting a different language for the system locale doesn't affect the language in menus and dialog boxes for Windows or other programs that do use Unicode.

The system locale determines the default character set used when displaying text in programs that do not support Unicode (Unicode is a character encoding standard that defines a set of letters, numbers and symbols that represent almost all the written languages in the world).

Selecting a different language for the system locale doesn't affect the language in menus and dialog boxes for Windows or other programs that do use Unicode.

To change the system locale:

From the Windows Control Panel's Region settings, configure the language you require as the system locale.
Restart your system for the settings to take effect.

SQL Server collation

Microsoft SQL Server has a set of collations that provide support for various languages. These collations ensure that when characters are stored in char and varchar columns, the symbols are stored and retrieved in the appropriate language. Therefore ensure that your SYSPRO company database has an appropriate language collation (e.g. if you wish to use Greek as your language, select the 'Greek_BIN2' SQL Server collation, as this is a binary collation and supports both the Greek and English character sets).

When adding a database, select the Options tab and define the appropriate language collation. Ensure to use either the binary (BIN or BIN2), or case and ascent sensitive (CS.AS) collation options.

XML encoding

Various parts of SYSPRO use XML to send and retrieve information. To ensure that characters in the XML string are handled as expected, you should specify the correct XML encoding in the language file header.

An example of this is creating a language file to support English and Greek characters (language code EL) using the XML encoding Windows-1253.

To create a language file with the correct header, create a plain text file in the SYSPRO \Base folder on the server, named: Lang_EL.TXT.

Ensure that it contains the following content:

; SYSPRO translation file
; ======================= 
; Language : EL - Greek 
; font-prop: Arial 
; font-mono: Consolas 
; xml-encod: Windows-1253 
;
; Last update : 2014/07/09 11:00 
;
; End of dictionary

Open the Admin System Setup program and set the Language code to EL
Restart SYSPRO.

You should be able to enter and view English and Greek characters side-by-side.

Thai and Simplified Chinese characters

The Operator Maintenance program enables you to configure special language support that caters for the use of Thai and Simplified Chinese characters within the generic text editor and on SYSPRO reports.

To enable this feature, select your preference at the Special language support field inside the Options tab of the Operator Maintenance program.

Once you have enabled the special language support for Thai or Simplified Chinese, you can assign any mono spaced font applicable to the language selected (e.g. Thaimono), as the default to use within SYSPRO.

If you do not enable this option when using Thai or Simplified Chinese, then the characters are not displayed correctly when previewing non-SRS reports and, in some cases, the display of text in the Notepad Editor.


	If you select to use the Special language support for Thai and assign the `Thaimono` font, this font must already be installed before you can use it from within SYSPRO.

Notes and warnings

Restrictions and limitations

The translation of SYSPRO Analytics to Simplified Chinese is not supported currently.
The following warnings are only applicable to the GL Financial Report Writer and SYSPRO Report Writer modules, when using a language with characters that are not Latin-based:
- Although the report preview may appear to be incorrectly scaled when you choose different zoom percentages, the printed output will be correct.
- If you have enabled the special language support option for Simplified Chinese characters (Operator Maintenance), the print preview for Windows-based printers will generate a string of text for each printed line, rather than showing the characters one at a time. This ensures that the font is rendered correctly.
  
  If you do not enable this option, then non-SRS reports will not display correctly.