24 Working with Multilanguage Portals

If your portal will be viewed by users in more than one country, you can configure it to display localized content based on the user's selected language and locale. For example, if you know your page will be viewed in Italy, you can localize your page so that when Italian is selected (in browser, user preferences, Space, or application settings), text strings in the page will appear in Italian.

Additionally, locale selection applies special formatting considerations applicable to the selected locale. For example, whether information is typically viewed from left to right or right to left, how numbers are depicted (such as monetary information), and the like.

This chapter includes the following sections:

What You Should Know About Languages in WebCenter Spaces
Configuring Language Options
Enabling Users to Choose a Language

24.1 What You Should Know About Languages in WebCenter Spaces

There are three main types of information that are displayed in WebCenter Spaces:

User interface (UI) elements, such as field and button labels and seeded boilerplate text
User-entered metadata, such as Space and page names
Content added by users, such as announcements, documents, and discussion forum content

Each type of information is handled differently when it comes to translation:

UI elements include out-of-the-box translations for 27 languages and 100 different locales. If the default UI text is not suited to your company's needs or if your company needs to support additional languages, your WebCenter Spaces administrator can edit the string files containing this text.
User-entered metadata can be translated by your WebCenter Spaces administrator the same way that UI elements are translated, by editing the string files.
Content added by users is generally displayed in the language used by the contributing user, though there is a way that your WebCenter Spaces administrator can display translated content using Content Presenter.

For information on translating information, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle WebCenter.

24.1.1 Display Language Precedence

The display language controls the language in which translated information is rendered in your browser.

On the Internet, browser settings normally control the display language used for the various web sites a user visits. However, WebCenter Spaces provides additional controls for language selection at the application, Space, and user levels. The order of precedence for WebCenter Spaces display language settings from weakest to strongest is as follows:

Browser setting—This is the language selected in the user's browser preferences. Browser documentation describes how to change this setting.
Public cookie—This is the session language a public user—that is, a user who is not logged in to WebCenter Spaces—can select on your portal's Welcome page. A session language is retained for the life of the cookie. If the user clears the browser cookies, the session language is also cleared.
Application setting—This is the application default language configured by your WebCenter Spaces administrator (for more information, see Section 5.4, "Choosing a Default Display Language").
User preference setting—This is the language the user selects through the personal Preferences settings (for more information, see Section 35.2, "Choosing Your Preferred Display Language")
Current scope—This is the language set the Space moderator sets for a given Space (for more information, see Section 51.4.15, "Setting a Space Display Language").

Note:

If the server on which WebCenter Spaces is running does not support the character set of the language preference set in WebCenter Spaces, the output information related to Spaces becomes garbled or displays as question marks.

To work around this issue, users can change the session language or their personal language preference to English. This creates new log file information. The log file is typically located at $WC_DOMAIN/servers/WLS_Spaces/logs.

24.1.2 Languages Supported Out-of-the-Box by WebCenter Spaces

WebCenter Spaces provides runtime translations for 27 languages and 100 different locales.

Table 24-1 Languages Available for Oracle WebCenter Spaces

A to Fi	Fr to No	P to T
Arabic	French	Polish
Brazilian Portuguese	German	Portuguese
Chinese (Simplified)	Greek	Romanian
Chinese (Traditional)	Hebrew	Russian
Czech	Hungarian	Slovak
Danish	Italian	Spanish
Dutch	Japanese	Swedish
English	Korean	Thai
Finnish	Norwegian	Turkish

The list in Table 24-1 includes all the languages available to WebCenter Spaces out-of-the-box. Users can also select locales associated with particular languages. For example, a user can change the language to Arabic and, within that language group, select from 20 different locales, including Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, and so on.

Note:

The administrative tier that offers services to WebCenter Spaces, including such tools as Oracle Enterprise Manager, provides a subset of the languages available to WebCenter Spaces. These include:

English
Brazilian Portuguese
Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Traditional)
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Spanish

The Discussions service uses the Jive application. Out-of-the-box, the Jive application bundled with WebCenter supports English and Spanish. It does not support other languages listed in Table 24-1. However, Jive is open to your own translation files. For more information, see http://www.jivesoftware.com/builds/docs/latest/documentation/developer-guide.html#i18n. This information is explicit to the Jive application user interface.

24.2 Configuring Language Options

This section describes how to configure the language options available in WebCenter Spaces. It includes the following sections:

- WebCenter Spaces administrators can configure the language displayed by default in WebCenter Spaces and the languages available to choose from in the WebCenter Spaces UI. For more information, see Section 5.4, "Choosing a Default Display Language."
- Space moderators can configure the language displayed by default in their specific Spaces and the languages available to choose from in their Spaces UI. For more information, see Section 51.4.15, "Setting a Space Display Language."
- Users can select a language preference that applies whenever they are logged in to WebCenter Spaces. For more information, see Section 35.2, "Choosing Your Preferred Display Language."

24.3 Enabling Users to Choose a Language

This section describes how to enable users to choose a language by adding a Change Language component to a page. It includes the following sections:

Adding a Change Language Task Flow to a Page
Setting Change Language Task Flow Properties

24.3.1 Adding a Change Language Task Flow to a Page

You can add the Change Language task flow to any page (in a Home Space, in a Group Space, or a business role page) to allow users to choose the language in which to display the UI.

To add a Change Language task flow to a page:

Go to the page where you want to add the task flow, and open the page in edit mode.

See Also:
For more information, see Section 17.3.1, "Entering and Exiting Page Edit Mode."
Click Add Content to open the Resource Catalog.
Locate the Change Language task flow in the Resource Catalog.

Note:
This task flow is not available in the default Resource Catalogs provided out-of-the-box with WebCenter Spaces, so you will only see the Change Language task flow if it has been added to the Resource Catalog that has been made available to the page.
For more information, see Chapter 16, "Working with Resource Catalogs", specifically Section 16.3.1.2, "Adding Resources" (in the Add Resource Catalog Item dialog, select Web Development, then scroll to Change Language).
Click Add next to the Change Language task flow, then Close the Resource Catalog.
Click Save, then Close.

24.3.2 Setting Change Language Task Flow Properties

You can customize the languages displayed in the Change Language component. For example, your Spaces application might be available in 27 different languages, but you might only need to display the content in your Space in three or four different languages, so you could filter the languages list to display only those languages. To customize the languages displayed in the Change Language component in your Space, view your Space in Edit mode, then click the Customize button associated with the Change Language component.

The Change Language task flow has associated properties, which users with sufficient privileges can access through the Component Properties dialog in Oracle Composer (Figure 24-1).

Figure 24-1 Change Language Task Flow - Component Properties

For information about accessing the Component Properties dialog, see Section 17.5.2.3, "Setting Component Properties."

The following sections provide information about properties of the Events service task flows and describe the properties on the Parameters tab:

Section 24.3.2.1, "What You Should Know About the Change Language Task Flow Properties"
Section 24.3.2.2, "Change Language Task Flow Parameters"

24.3.2.1 What You Should Know About the Change Language Task Flow Properties

The properties on the Parameters tab of the Component Properties dialog control the default task flow content. For descriptions of the parameters on this tab, see Section 24.3.2.2, "Change Language Task Flow Parameters." For some task flows, parameters on this tab facilitate the wiring of the task flow to page parameters and page definition variables. For information about wiring pages and components, see Chapter 19, "Wiring Pages, Task Flows, Portlets, and UI Components."

Changes to the properties on the Display Options, Style, and Content Style tabs affect the appearance and behavior of the task flow for all users. These properties are common to all task flows. For more information, see Section 17.5.2, "Setting Properties on Page Components."

The contents of the Events tab depend on the events supported by the task flow. For more information, see Section 17.5.2.8, "Working with Component Contextual Events."

All properties on the Parameters and Display Options tabs provide access to an Expression Language (EL) editor, which you can use to select or specify a variable value instead of a constant value. Click the Edit icon next to a property field to open the editor. For more information about using the editor and for descriptions of common EL expressions, see Appendix B, "Expression Language Expressions."

24.3.2.2 Change Language Task Flow Parameters

Table 24-1 describes the parameters that are unique to the Change Language task flow.

Table 24-2 Change Language Task Flow Parameters

Parameter Description

Parameter	Description
`Display Detailed List`	Display a detailed list of languages, including locales. Default: Not selected
`Persist Change to Preferences`	Persist the user's language choice to the user's preferences. Default: Not selected
`Scope`	The name or GUID of the scope to which you want this language selection to apply. By default, the language selection is applied to the current scope. This means that a Change Language component placed on a page in the Home Space affects the entire application, and a Change Language component placed in a particular Space affects just that Space. To limit the language selection to a Space other than the current Space, set this to the intended Space's GUID. For information about obtaining a Space's GUID, see Section 29.9.1, "Accessing Space Information."

Display Detailed List

Display a detailed list of languages, including locales.

Default: Not selected

Persist Change to Preferences

Persist the user's language choice to the user's preferences.

Default: Not selected

Scope

The name or GUID of the scope to which you want this language selection to apply.

By default, the language selection is applied to the current scope. This means that a Change Language component placed on a page in the Home Space affects the entire application, and a Change Language component placed in a particular Space affects just that Space.

To limit the language selection to a Space other than the current Space, set this to the intended Space's GUID. For information about obtaining a Space's GUID, see Section 29.9.1, "Accessing Space Information."