Locale Handling

frevvo supports localization from the browser's locale setting. frevvo will recognize the browser locale and alter displays and input formats as well as language according to the user's setting. Setting this preference is browser specific. Refer to this website for information about language preferences and how to change those in a number of popular browsers. Here is an example using the Firefox browser:

To change your language preferences in the Firefox browser:

1. Click on the File menu, then select Options
   

   
   
   

2. Click the Content tab and then click the Choose button in the Language section.
   
   

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3. Click on the dropdown arrow to select the preferred language from a long list of choices.
   
   

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4. Click the Add button to add the selection to the list and then use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to modify the order of preference. Click OK to save your selections. 
   
   
   

You can select a general language code or a language/country code. The image above shows the choices for Spanish, Spanish/Mexico, Spanish/Chile and Spanish/Paraguay which appear as choices in the Firefox Language list. Notice the list of languages in the Firefox browser uses the ISO 639-1 two character language codes and two character country codes for most of the choices. This may not be the case for other browsers.

Locale URL Parameter

The browser locale may be overridden using the special frevvo locale url parameter.  This is often very useful for testing your language specific localizations. The locale parameter is of the form ISO_639_2_CODE | ISO_639_1_CODE [ _ISO_3166_1_CODE ]  - where:

• ISO 639-2 Code - The 3-letter ISO 639-2 languages code or ISO 639-1 Code - The 2-letter ISO 639-1 languages code.  One or the other is required.

• ISO 3166-1 Code - The 2 letter ISO 3166 alpha 2 country code.  This is Optional.

For example, the ISO 639-2 three character code for English is eng. The ISO 639-2 two character code for English is en. The ISO 3166-1 country code for English in the United States is US. You can append eng_US or en_US as your locale to specify English in the United States. 

Here is another example where the Firefox browser is set for the German language and the form's share URL has the &locale parameter equal to the ISO 639-2 three character code for Spanish appended to it. The appended &locale parameter will override the browser language setting of German and display the form in Spanish provided the appropriate translation files have been uploaded to frevvo.  Locale Names are case sensitive. 

There is a built-in locale method in frevvo that you can use in a Business Rule. This method returns the locale from the browser URL.

Translating Your Form

You can easily localize any form by clicking 

 in the form's Action Menu on the Forms & Workflows Home Page. This opens the Locale Home Page for that form. The default locale is the original language you used in the form designer. Each new locale you create will appear on this page. In the example below this form was translated to Spanish.

The steps below describe the process of creating, testing and using a Spanish locale translation for a form named Travel Request Form.

Download and Translate

1. Click the down

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    icon to download the default locale. Save the file named TravelRequestForm_default.properties to your disk

2. Rename this file to your locale language. Though this is not required it is helpful so you will later know which translation this file contains. In this example we renamed the file to: TravelRequestForm_spanish.properties

3. Edit TravelRequestForm_spanish.properties in a simple editor like Wordpad on Windows

Here is an example locale properties translation file. This forms contains several controls labeled in English. Also you will always see the labels for the submit button and the save, load, and print icons. These can be localized too. In this example only the field labels were translated.

You will see a line for every control label in your form, message control text, hint, help, etc... in the format:

<Text String>=

Add translations for each text string:

<Text String>=<Text String in Spanish>

For example:

First\ Name=Primero Nombre

• Notice that the strings on the left side of the '=' have spaces escaped with the '\' character. This is needed so do not remove that. The escape character is not needed on the right side of the '='. The example above correctly has "First\ Name" on the left and "Primero Nombre" on the right.

• If you have a label that contains a colon, it must be escaped in the in the default translation files. Newly downloaded default translation files properly escape a colon with a '\'. Translation files with strings containing colons will have to be re-uploaded with the colon properly escaped.

You may find some strings in the default properties file that are not applicable to your form. Here are a few example strings that are only applicable if you're using the save/load feature, workflows feature or Electronic Signatures.

Text strings inside of controls, such as the Add Files text in the Upload control are translated using these files. 

Translation Considerations

• Some browsers have problems with apostrophe characters. To ensure that your translations are ok on all browsers you should use the html escape character in place of the apostrophe. Refer to this additional information describing HTML Reserved Characters.

  # If this does not work in your browser: Initializing\ form=l'initialisation de la forme # Instead use the html apostrophe escape sequence like this Initializing\ form=l'initialisation de la forme

• Check the 'Save Value' property for Message controls that you will want to translate.

• Messages formatted in HTML that contain new line characters in the text may not translate properly. For Example, the Text "Trip Itinerary <br/> Please Complete" in a message control to label the Trip Itinerary section of the Travel Request form will appear on the screen to have a new line in it. New Lines are ignored by HTML. Do not use new lines in forms that require localization.

• Use English alphabet characters only when naming controls. For example, controls named with ó as in Póliza may cause issues when the control is used in a business rule and with submission data.

• The frevvo Preview function displays in the default locale. This is as designed. Go to the existing internationalize page to test the use mode form in the target locale/language. 

• Be careful when internationalizing markup. Do not assume that the string property name is valid markup. For Example: Let's say you had a field called FirstName in your form with this styling applied to the label: <span style="color:red;font-weight:bold;">FirstName</span>. The default strings properties file shows the property name as: <span\ style"color:red;font-weight:bold;">FirstName</span>. It is missing the '=' after style.  This is intentionally stripped out because otherwise if it was left in, the = would be interpreted as the end of the property name. Adding <span style="color:red;font-weight:bold;">Primero Nombre</span> to the right side of the "=" sign, in this case, will translate this label successfully. If you see the error message " Failed to generate PDF snapshot: Could not generate PDF" check the markup in your translation files.

• Buttons in the frevvo UI, such as "Set" in the Visual Rule Builder or "Log In" in the Form/Flow Properties Document Action tab, may not resize to fit translated text that has more characters than original text. In this scenario, consider using a different label or abbreviating to ensure text fits neatly.
  
  
  

• Translate the string "You can't leave this empty" to show an error message if data is not entered into a required field. See the Error Message property for more information.

Upload and Test

Upload your translation file.

1. Choose the locale from the dropdown. In this example we choose Spanish. Note the list of available locales is configured by your frevvo system administrator (In-house only).

2. Browse to your translation file - TravelRequestForm_spanish.properties on disk

3. Click the upload button. You will see the new locale appear in the list above. In this case named Spanish::locale=spa

4. Click the test

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    icon to view the form with your translation to this new language.