• 3 minutes to read
  • Contributors

The AL developer environment is evolving with frequent updates. To stay up to date on the latest information and announcements, follow us on the Dynamics NAV Team Blog.

Working with Translation Files

Dynamics 365 Business Central is multilanguage enabled, which means that you can display the user interface (UI) in different languages. To add a new language to the extension you have built, you must first enable the generation of XLIFF files. The XLIFF file extension is .xlf. The generated XLIFF file contains the strings that are specified in properties such as Caption and Tooltip.

Note

The support for using the ML properties, such as CaptionML and TooltipML, is being deprecated, so it is recommended to refactor your extension to use the corresponding property, such as Caption or Tooltip, which is being picked up in the .xlf file.

Important

You can use the .xlf translation files approach only for objects from your extension. For translating the base application you still need to use the .txt files approach. For more information, see the Translation and Localization apps section below.

Translation and Localization apps

The .xlf files approach cannot be used for translating the base application. If you are working on a translation or localization app (for example for a country/region localization), you must take the .txt file containing the base application translation, and place the file in the root folder of your extension. When the extension is compiled, the .txt file is then packaged with the extension.

We recommend that you use only one .txt file per language. There is no enforced naming on the .txt files, but a suggested good practice is to name it <extensionname>.<language>.txt.

For more information about importing and exporting .txt files, see How to: Add Translated Strings By Importing and Exporting Multilanguage Files in Dynamics NAV.

Generating the XLIFF file

To enable generation of the translation file, you must add a setting in the manifest. In the app.json file of your extension, add the following line:

  "features": [ "TranslationFile" ]

Now, when you run the build command (Ctrl+Shift+B) in Visual Studio Code, a \Translations folder will be generated and populated with the .xlf file that contains all the labels, label properties, and report labels that you are using in the extension. The generated .xlf file can now be translated.

Important

Make sure to rename the translated file to avoid that the file is overwritten next time the extension is built.

Syntax

As stated above, the ML properties (CaptionML, TooltipML etc.), the old report label syntax, and TextConst do not get included in the .xlf file for translation. Make sure to update your code from the old ML syntax to the new label syntax described below.

The label syntax is shown in the example below for the Caption property:

Caption = 'Developer translation for %1',  Comment = '%1 is extension name', locked = false, MaxLength=999;

Note

The comment, locked, and maxLength attributes are optional and the order is not enforced.

Use the same syntax for report labels:

labels
{
  LabelName = 'Label Text', Comment='Foo', MaxLength=999, Locked=true;
}

And the following is the syntax for Label data types:

var
    a : Label 'Label Text', Comment='Foo', MaxLength=999, Locked=true;

The XLIFF file

In the generated .xlf file, you can see a <source> element for each label. For the translation, you will now have to add the target-language and a <target> element per label. This is illustrated in the example below.

<ding="utf-8"?>
<xliff version="1.2" xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:xliff:document:1.2" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="urn:oasis:names:tc:xliff:document:1.2 xliff-core-1.2-transitional.xsd">
  <file datatype="xml" source-language="en-US" target-language=”da-DK” original="ALProject16">
    <body>
      <group id="body">
        <trans-unit id="PageExtension 1255613137 - Property 2879900210" maxWidth="999" size-unit="char" translate="yes" xml:space="preserve">
          <source>Developer translation for %1</source>
          &lt;target state="translated"&gt;Udvikleroversættelse for %1&lt;/target&gt;
          <note from="Developer" annotates="general" priority="2">%1 is extension name</note>
          <note from="Xliff Generator" annotates="general" priority="3">PageExtension - PageExtension</note>
        </trans-unit>
      </group>
    </body>
  </file>
</xliff>

Note

You can have only one .xlf file per language. If you translate your extension to multiple languages, you must have a translation file per language. There is no enforced naming on the file, but a suggested good practice is to name it <extensionname>.<language>.xlf.

When the extension is built and published, you change the language of Dynamics 365 Business Central to view the UI in the translated language.

See Also

How to: Add Translated Strings By Importing and Exporting Multilanguage Files in Dynamics NAV