At the Syntactic level, you have all the cosmetic aspects of an application that require conversion for a different NLS version. This includes the main task of translation—providing appropriate versions of text literals in the target NLS. Text can be classified as syntactic rather than semantic as it is not ‘meaningful’. From the point of view of application design, a literal is simply a label, albeit one which must follow the rules for its given language.
On iSeries, there are a number of specific software facilities that make the translation of text easier, such as externally-described messages. It addition to the mechanisms to facilitate text translation, there is also operating system support for variable properties such as currency symbols, decimal point characters, and date formats. You should design your applications to use these facilities wherever appropriate. You should also design to parameterize those cosmetic aspects not covered by the standard mechanisms. For instance, the values a user enters to indicate ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ tend to be language dependent. One of the many reasons for following the SAA CUA standards for application user interfaces is that the standards are to some extent language independent; for instance, they advocate the use of numbers to select items (4= Delete), and have been devised with the possibility of a translation requirement in mind.
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