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In our last two posts, we examined how Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online 2011 supports multiple languages. We explained that the base language is the language chosen during CRM Online 2011 implementation and that additional languages can be enabled by a System Administrator. We then showed that users can choose their personal display languages from the enabled languages.
In this post, we cover how languages work with customizations.
Customizations must be created in the base language. Once created, their textual elements can be translated. That includes entity display names, field labels, etc. There are four steps to translation: export the text, translate the text, import the text, and publish the customizations. We’ll walk through the process below.
You will need to have a Security Role of System Administrator or System Customizer or equivalent privileges to export or import translations.
Navigate to Settings > Customization (see below) and click Customize the System.
The Solution: Default Solution window opens (see below). Click Export Translations. Please note: This export file will be large. As an alternative, for a smaller file, you could bundle just the entities you wanted to translate into a new Solution and export the text from that Solution instead, but that’s beyond the depth of this walkthrough.
A Message from webpage opens (see below), stating that Exporting customized labels for translation can take several minutes. Click OK when you are ready to export.
You will be prompted to save the file. The prompt will differ depending on your browser version (see an example below). Save the file in an appropriate location.
The file is a .zip file that you can extract and open in Microsoft Office Excel to make the edits. You may be able to translate the text yourself, or you could send it to a linguistic expert, translation agency, or localization firm.
Once you have completed the translation, .zip the file up again and import it into CRM Online.
Te Solution: Default Solution window opens (see below). Click Import Translations
The Import Translated Text dialog opens (see below). Click the Browse… button and locate the translated .zip file. Click Import.
Your translations are imported automatically (see below).
The window refreshes and states Translations successfully imported. Click Close.
Our focus returns to the Solution: Default Solution window (see below). Click Publish All Customizations to finalize the translation customization.
Warning: Publish All Customizations really means “All”. That includes customizations other System Customizers may be working on. If you are not the only one doing any customization, a safer method might be to open each of the components for which you provided translation text, such as entities, and click “Publish” instead. Companies that do a lot of customization sometimes designate one user as the “build master” who is responsible for publishing customizations by everyone else. This helps with “source control” or “change control”.
To verify that your published translations appear properly, change your display language to match the language of your translations by following the steps in our previous article, “¿Habla usted español? Enable additional languages in CRM”.
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