Multilingual metadata

You can now translate the metadata of a data module. Labels, descriptions, and screen tips can be translated. The users can view the metadata, such as table and column names, in their language. At this moment, the localized data module can be used in Reporting only.

With a localized data module, a report can be created in one language and viewed in other languages.

This functionality can be used not only to translate strings to different languages, but also to provide different versions of the string in the same language. A string can be translated in different ways, depending on the context, by using the identifier of the object and matching the case of the string.

A modeler specifies the list of locales for which translated metadata needs to be provided, and sends the selected tables to an external service for translation. The translated data is stored externally, in uploaded files or databases. Updates and refinements to translations do not require editing of the data module.

You can control and refine the scope of translation by including either all tables in the data module, or only selected tables.

Note: Data localization is different than metadata localization. For a data module to fully support multiple locales, localized data must also be provided. Multilingual data is supported by Cognos® Analytics for a long time.

The following image shows an example of a data module with multilingual metadata:

To add a new translation definition, click the Languages icon in the vertical toolbar. Then, click the Add metadata conversion icon Add button , and in the Create language dialog box, specify the required settings.

To learn how to create a new translation definition, you can download two sample .xlsx files, provided by IBM, that support multilingual data and multilingual metadata, and use them to create a multilingual data module. For more information, see Using the sample files to create a multilingual data module.

As part of the multilingual metadata support, two new data module properties are added:

Design language: The language in which the data module was created. By default, the design language is the same as the user content language.
Translate content: When this property is turned off, the metadata cannot be translated.

For more information, see Multilingual metadata.