SAP language conversion help

Please note that this document is written with the assumption that the SAP system along with a number of bespoke ABAP's have been developed and implemented in the UK. The requirement is for the system along with many of the bespoke developments to be deployed in Germany.

The conversion of existing ABAP programs to be German compatible could involve a number of different translations/modifications, which fall into the following categories:

• Direct text conversion
• Program modification
• Table contents update
• Creation of new external documents (Jetform, Intermec).

Most of the areas for concern fall into this category and involve the creation of German text strings that would directly replace the English versions. Although this sounds straightforward there are a number of issues, which need to be considered such as who will perform the actual translation and how.

With regards to how the translation will be performed there is a translation transaction (SE63) that allows you to input a SAP object (program/ table etc.) and create new texts in any language. I am not sure how involved the extension team would be in this process other than to identify which SAP objects (programs, tables) for a particular extension need converting via SE63. The actual conversion would need to be performed by someone who is able to speak both English and German.

There are a number of SAP objects, which will be affected by direct translation, all of which will be translated in a similar way via transaction SE63:

• Language conversion of Text elements
• Language conversion of Messages
• Language conversion of screen attributes
• Language conversion of Z Table texts
• Language conversion of Help/Documentation

Program modifications will involve an alteration to the source code, which covers modifications such as:

• Removal/ changing of hard coded values (e.g. plant)
• Re-alignment of reports

Instead of having hard coded values a number of extensions reference data that is stored on a Z table (Look-up table). If this data consists of English text or data not appropriate to the German system, it would need to be translated accordingly. This modification would involve implementing an additional field on the table to identify the language of the text followed by an ABAP code change to retrieve text in the correct language.

Many extensions produce documents that are created using application software other than SAP (i.e. Jetform). If many extensions use Jetform design documents, these would have to be converted into German. With Jetform a large percentage of the document text is implemented as part of the Jetform design. Therefor in-order for these extensions to be used on a German system an identical German version of the Jetform would need to be created.

There are two possibilities of complexity for this conversion process, with the simplest requiring the creation of the new German document and a simple check in the ABAP code to decide which language to print in. This scenario would rely on being able to fit German text into the existing document format/layout.

On the other hand if the German text requires increased space or requires a modified layout then the ABAP print program and SAPScript could also need modifying.

In conclusion a number of conversion issues have been identified, many of which are related to the translation of English text strings into German. This translation would need to be carried out by someone who can speak both English and German using transaction SE63. This displays the current texts and allows the creation of corresponding texts in any language. An example development process is shown below in Table 1. The ABAP developer would review the extension and identify any objects that require text conversion. These objects would then be passed to a translator who would use SE63 to translate all the related texts from English to German while the ABAP developer performs other required conversions such as hard coded values, Jetform creation etc. Testing could then be performed and any alterations carried out.

 
Other recommendations have also been identified to help reduce the amount of effort required for the conversion process. These include ensuring the corresponding German texts are not longer than the English versions. This would reduce the risk of having to re-align reports, as the new texts would simple replace the UK versions without the need for additional space (See 1.2.2 Re-alignment of reports).

Although text translation will effect most, if not all required extensions I feel that other conversion issues such as removal of hard coded values, table updates could provide the biggest problems. They are also more individual to a particular extension making it difficult to provide a general description of how to tackle them and what will be involved.