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Understanding how languages behave

Describes the different types of languages available in Content Manager from a technical point of view.

Overview of languages

An informational list of different interpretations of the word, language.

WhatWhere usedDescription
Document languageDatabase field DOC-LANGUAGEUsed on various language card types to hold the language of the object, matching a value from DLANGUAGE. The regular language field used to uniquely identify the language level in the logical/version/language hierachy.
Working languageDatabase field FSOURCELANGUAGEUsed on various language card types to store the source language, matching a value from DLANGUAGE. The source language is set automatically by Translation Management to indicate from which language was started to create this language. When the language card is the working language for this object, the source language is empty.
Database field FISHPUBSOURCELANGUAGESUsed on CTPUBLICATIONV to store the working and source languages of the publication, matching values from DLANGUAGE. When freezing a baseline, (only) objects in these languages must be released.
Language combinationDatabase field FISHPUBLNGCOMBINATIONA single language or a combination of language values, which, together with the FISHOUTPUTFORMAT uniquely indentifies the publication language. Switching the order of the language combination means a different publication.
Fallback language for publishing topics and mapsDatabase field FISHFALLBACKLNGDEFAULTUsed on CTPUBLICATIONOUTPUT to store the default fallback languages for publishing, matching values from DLANGUAGE.
Fallback language for publishing imagesDatabase field FISHFALLBACKLNGIMAGESUsed on CTPUBLICATIONOUTPUT to store the fallback languages for publishing images, matching values from DLANGUAGE.
Fallback language for publishing resourcesDatabase field FISHFALLBACKLNGRESOURCESUsed on CTPUBLICATIONOUTPUT to store the fallback languages for publishing resources, matching values from DLANGUAGE.
User languageDatabase field FISHUSERLANGUAGEUsed on the USER card type to store the working/default language for this user, matching a value from DLANGUAGE.
Map languageDatabase field FMASTERLNG[obsolete] Used on CTCONFIGURATION to store the default language of the system. This field is replaced by FISHUSERLANGUAGE.

Language Applicability or Language Independent object

History:
  • Images are typically objects which are language independent. It happens often that you want to reuse an image in publications in various languages since the image is the same in all publications. The simplest solution for this was to use Fall-back languages for images during publishing.
  • We added support to set multiple languages on one logical/version/language entry by making the Document Language database field DOC-LANGUAGE multi-value for images.
Some typical scenarios are:
  • The creation of a language independent image happens just as before. The user interface for the DOC-LANGUAGE field is not a single select but a multi select one.
  • Adding more languages can be done in the user interface.
  • Removing languages can be done, but at least one language must be kept. Otherwise we would have a language level entry without a defined language.

From a programmatic point of view, the psLanguage parameter is only used to identify an object. So a language independent image holding DOC-LANGUAGE entries en, fr, nl can be found using either of these values. If you want to add/remove values to this multi value DOC-LANGUAGE you should set a value in the submitted metadata.

Restrictions are:
  • Translation Management is not allowed on language independent objects.
  • Start Reuse is not allowed on language independent objects.
  • Language Independent objects are only allowed for images (CTIMG) and other (Word, PDF,...) (CTTEMPLATE).

Publishing process

The publishing process contains the following steps:
  • First the correct versions are retrieved for all objects used in the publication. When the version is not yet selected in the baseline, the latest available version is calculated. In order to ensure that each publication output will use the same versions, the versions are calculated using the working language on the publication version.
  • Then all language information for the objects is retrieved in all possible languages.

    Note that:
    • The resource fallback language is not only used for the objects which are specified in the field FISHRESOURCES but also for all objects which are referenced by those objects.
    • When a library topic is referenced by a resource, the language information is retrieved in all languages which are specified in: the language combination and the resource fallback language.
    • When an image is referenced by a resource, the language information is retrieved in all languages which are specified in: the language combination, the resource fallback language AND the image fallback language.
  • Before exporting the objects to the file system, the redundant language objects are removed
  • Finally, the objects are exported to the file system