Multilanguage application data (OP)

If your LN system uses the Unicode character set, you can run multiple languages of the LN software, such as Chinese, English, and French in one LN environment. Also, you can enable LN to store shared application data in multiple languages. This is useful if users from all over the globe are using the same environment. Depending on the user’s software language, the application data can also be displayed in the same language. If a report for a business partner is printed, the layout and data of the report are in the business partner’s language.

To store shared application data in multiple languages, you must configure Multilanguage Fields Support.

Note

You can only configure Multilanguage Fields Support for fields of the Multibyte String data type.

To support all languages available for LN in one environment, you must install LN in Unicode mode. Unicode is the standard for multilanguage support and provides a unique code for each character regardless of the language.

Language types

This table shows the language types:

Software Language	The language in which the software components, such as forms and reports, are displayed. For each user, the default software language is defined in the LN user data.
Data Language	The language in which the application data is displayed. Data languages are linked to users and software languages.
Base Language	The fallback language used to display application data. LN uses the following fallback mechanism: LN displays the application data in the data language specified in your user data. If no data language is specified in your user data, LN displays the application data in the data language linked to your software language. If no data language is linked to your software language, LN displays the application data in the base language.

ISO standards

In Infor Enterprise Server versions prior to 8.4.1, the coding of data languages is based on the ISO 639-2 standard. However, this standard is not sufficient for coding languages such as Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Portuguese, and Brazilian Portuguese.

To support these languages, language coding in Infor Enterprise Server 8.4.1 and higher is done according to the ISO standards used for Java programs. A data language code consists of:

A language code based on the ISO 639-1 standard.
Optional: a country code based on the ISO 3166-1 standard.

The language code and the country code are separated by an underscore (_).

For example:

Data Language	Description
de	German
en_GB	English_UNITED KINGDOM
en_US	English_UNITED STATES
he	Hebrew
it	Italian
ja	Japanese
nl	Dutch; Flemish
pt_BR	Portuguese_BRAZIL
pt_PT	Portuguese_PORTUGAL
zh_CN	Chinese_CHINA (Simplified)
zh_TW	Chinese_TAIWAN (Traditional)

Note

To use the new Enterprise Server 8.4.1 coding standards, a table reconfiguration can be required for data languages created in earlier Enterprise Server versions. For details, see the Specific Installation Guide - Updates (U9497).