Manage Cultures

Use the Manage Cultures page of the Globalization Management dialog to manage the cultures for your system.

You can:

  • Add cultures

    You must do this before you can enable the culture so that translations are visible to users.

  • Enable and disable cultures

    This enables you to control which translations are visible to users for each culture.

  • Reorder cultures to specify "fall-back" languages

    Culture order determines the "fall-back" languages that are visible to users if a translation is not available for their selected culture.

  • Delete cultures

    Delete cultures that are no longer needed.

Add Cultures

When you add a culture, definitions for that culture are added to a Blueprint that you can publish immediately or save and publish later.

Newly created culture-specific fields are automatically populated with data from the primary culture. This prevents the culture-specific fields from having null values.

To add a culture:

  1. In the main window, select the Globalization category, and then select Globalization Settings.
  2. Select the Manage Cultures page.
  3. Select the Plus sign to the right of the drop-down menu.

    The Add Culture dialog opens, and the Cultures menu contains cultures you can add to your system.

  4. Select the culture to add to your system.
  5. Select OK.

The Blueprint that contains new definitions based on the added culture opens. Once you publish the Blueprint, the newly added culture is shown on the Manage Cultures page. You must enable the culture before it is available in the culture selector.

Enable and Disable Cultures

Cultures are available in the culture selector after you enable them. Disabled cultures are not available in the culture selector.

To enable a culture, select the Enabled check box.

To disable a culture, clear the Enabled check box.

Reorder Cultures to Specify "Fall-back" Languages

Use the arrows to reorder the priority in which enabled cultures are shown to users if a translation is unavailable for their culture. For more information, see Fallback Mechanism.

Delete Cultures

When you delete a culture, associated definitions are deleted from Business Objects, grids, and forms. A Blueprint is created so you can verify your changes before you publish them to your system.

Do not delete the German (de-DE) culture. CSM uses this culture as a baseline because it often has larger strings than other cultures, which helps to ensure new cultures don't have overlapping controls when platform resources are translated. If the German culture is removed, it has no "fall-back," so it will take empty values for size and position. This could result in hidden or tiny controls and labels.

When a culture is deleted, data associated with culture-specific fields is also deleted and cannot be recovered once you publish the Blueprint.

The primary culture, also referred to as the installed culture, cannot be deleted or removed from the list of cultures.

To delete a culture:

  1. In the main window, select the Globalization category, and then select Globalization Settings.
  2. Select the Manage Cultures page.
  3. Select a culture in the list, and then select the Delete icon.

The Blueprint with deleted definitions opens. Once you publish the Blueprint, deleted definitions are removed from your system and the deleted culture is no longer shown on the Manage Cultures page.