Language and locale support

IBM® Maximo® Application Suite supports the use of preferred language and locale for the Maximo Application Suite user interfaces. The preferences that are applied override the language and locale settings for the browser that is used to access Maximo Application Suite.

For example, if a user's preferred language is set to German and Maximo Application Suite is accessed from a browser set to English, the user interface is displayed in German.

Note: The following information is applicable to locale management for customer-managed Maximo Application Suite.
The user interface language
The languages that are displayed in the user interface are controlled by your browser settings, your preferred language setting, and the application base language.
Browser language setting
When users access the Maximo Application Suite user interface, the displayed language is set by their browser language settings, if the language is available. If the language that is selected in the browser is not available, the application base language is displayed.
Preferred language setting
Users can overrule the browser setting by selecting a preferred language, which is then displayed in supported applications no matter what the current browser language setting is. If the application does not support the preferred language setting, then the displayed language is controlled by the browser language setting.

Application-specific support

For a breakdown of the application-specific language support, see the following list.
Maximo Application Suite home page and Administration pages
The base language is English (en_US). Preferred language is supported.
Maximo Collaborate
The base language is English (en_US). Preferred language is supported.
Maximo Health
The base language is configurable. Preferred language is supported.
Maximo Manage
The base language is configurable. Preferred language is supported.
Maximo Predict
The base language is English (en_US). Preferred language is not supported.
Maximo Monitor
The base language is English (en_US). Preferred language is supported in 8.10 and later versions.
Maximo Visual Inspection
The base language is English (en_US). Preferred language is not supported.
Industry solutions
The base language is English (en_US). Preferred language is supported.
The following languages and locale are supported in Maximo Application Suite:
  • Arabic (ar)

    Supported only in Maximo Manage and IBM Maximo Real Estate and Facilities.

  • Brazilian Portuguese (pt-BR)
  • Croatian (hr)
  • Czech (cs)
  • Danish (da)
  • Dutch (nl)
  • English (en_US)
  • English (en_UK)
  • Finnish (fl)
  • French (fr)
  • German (de)
  • Hebrew (he_IS)

    Supported only in Maximo Manage and IBM Maximo Real Estate and Facilities.

  • Hungarian (hu)
  • Italian (it)
  • Japanese (ja)
  • Korean (ko)
  • Norwegian (no)
  • Polish (pl)
  • Simplified Chinese (zh_CN)
  • Slovak (sk)
  • Slovenian (sl)
  • Spanish (es)
  • Swedish (sv)
  • Traditional Chinese (zh_TW)
  • Turkish (tr)

Multi-language support in Maximo Manage

If your environment is configured to use multiple languages, user interface elements and certain data fields are shown in the language that is set by the user.

Field labels and menus appear in the user's language. However, the following key values in Maximo Manage remain in the base language and are not translated.

  • Work order numbers
  • Ticket number
  • Status codes from the synonym domain
  • Type of object, record, or transaction

If an English user enters data in a company description field in English, a German user sees the same description in English. To see the description in German, the user can update the field. By default, the Company.NAME field is configured to support and enable multi-language by using the mlsupported and mlinuse attributes. If a field is flagged as mlsupported, the field can store separate values for different languages. Users who have their environment in another language can view that content in that language, if the translation is provided. When a field is mlinuse, the field is enabled to store multiple language versions of the content.

Other tables can be enabled for multi-language in the Database Configuration application in Maximo Manage. The work order table is not supported by multi-language because this table if a transactional table.

The data in the fields that are supported and enabled for multi-language appear in the language in which the data is entered. A user who uses a different language can change this data by overwriting the data in the other language.

If data, such as a description, is entered by a base language user, then other language users see the data that was created by the base language user. However, if a nonbase language user, such as a Dutch user, enters the description, then the base language user or non-Dutch users do not see the description. The field is blank. Non-Dutch users can then enter the description in their own words. This implies that two or more copies of data are retained for mlsupported fields, one for the original language and one for each additional language.

When the German user retrieves a work order that is in English and changes the description or the work order from English to German, the German user always sees the description in German. The English user continues to see the description in English. The exception is the description in the work order table because as a transactional table, this table is not supported by multiple languages. Updates to other tables that are supported by multiple languages are applied.

The only way that data in one field appears in multiple languages is when the user modifies the content in the field to their own language. Maximo Manage does not automatically translate information.