I was fortunate to work on a SuiteApp designed to support people from diverse backgrounds. Our goal was to globalize the application by localizing it to meet users' needs. Language influences us more than we often realize, playing a crucial role in market engagement. This vision aligns with NetSuite’s introduction of the Multi-Language feature, which enhances inclusivity and expands the scope of businesses it can support on a global scale.
To begin managing translations in NetSuite, you first need to enable multiple languages in your account. Here’s how to do it:
Once set up, a “Translations” subtab will appear when you create components.
For instance, let’s take a custom record type. We can translate the name of this custom record type, “Book,” to Japanese as 本.
For fields, both the label and help texts can now be translated.
To see the translations in action, change your language preference to Japanese:
If you want to deploy this component to another account, you can download the XML for the custom record type. Just keep in mind that the XML won’t include the translation strings you added. When you create a new instance of the component using the XML definition, you’ll need to re-enter those translation strings manually.
Now you can download the translation XML definitions:
Next, link our custom record type to translate it. In the XML definition of our custom record type, use translate="T" for the following:
Ensure your deploy.xml includes the importation of translation strings.
Once deployed, the translation strings will be linked to our custom record type, achieving the same effect while storing the translation strings in our project.
Previously, as a Software Engineer in Test, one of our tasks was to ensure that the translation strings were set correctly. At that time, the Translation Collections feature wasn’t available, and we had to automate the process of setting strings for each component individually.
This feature really changes the game for streamlining the translation process in our applications. With just a simple deployment, the translation strings are included automatically.
In this article, we covered how to manage translations for NetSuite components. There’s also a new module, the N/translation module, that we can use in SuiteScript, which will be the focus of our next article.
To see the complete SuiteScript code and implementation details discussed in this article, visit Jona’s GitHub repository.
Jona has over a decade of experience in SuiteCloud Development on the NetSuite platform. She specializes in implementing advanced solutions and has led teams in creating high-quality software. Jona holds multiple certifications and has been recognized with awards like the Summit Award and Quality Champion Award.
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