COBOL Language Localization

The isCOBOL language resource feature provides an easy, yet powerful way to localize an application by configuring the text to be displayed for a particular user interface at runtime by selecting it from different languages.

During the initial program initialization, and optionally before calling a subprogram, the isCOBOL Runtime Framework loads a specified language resource file. This file is a Java properties file which contains any number of name=value pairs. A developer specifies where in the program he or she wants these resource values to be used with a letter R followed by the quoted name of the resource. For example,

DISPLAY R"Greeting".

will use a resource named Greeting that has been loaded from the language resource file. If a resource file contains the following:

Greeting=Hello World

Then the program will display:

Hello World

A resource name can be used anywhere in program source code where it is valid to use a string literal.

The basic steps required to create a multi-language version of a program using the isCOBOL language feature are:

1. Search for string literals in the program source code
   
   
2. Copy each string literal to a text file and remove the quotes
   
   
3. Add a resource name followed by an equal sign to the beginning of the line in the text file
   
   
4. Replace the original string literal in the source code with the letter R (or lowercase r) followed by the quoted resource name

For example, a developer could replace "Please enter a valid credit card number" with r"ValidCCNumberMsg" and then add the following line to the resource file:

ValidCCNumberMsg=Please enter a valid credit card number

To assist the translator, a comment line can be added before or after each text resource value and describe the usage and/or context. For example,

# Program: CCVALIDATE
# Context: Message displayed on line 24 when user has entered an invalid credit card number
ValidCCNumberMsg=Please enter a valid credit card number

The name of the language resource file is constructed from the values of the following framework properties:

iscobol.resource.file
iscobol.resource.country
iscobol.resource.language
iscobol.resource.variant

as follows (square brackets enclose optional elements):

file[_language[_country[variant]]].properties

For example, if iscobol.resource.file=RES and iscobol.resource.language=en then the isCOBOL Runtime Framework will attempt to load a file named RES_en.properties.

The resource file must be located in a directory or jar file listed in the class path.

The above framework properties can be set programmatically using SET ENVIRONMENT leaving off the "iscobol." prefix.

The following example uses Hebrew text to illustrate the capabilities of the isCOBOL language resource feature:



It is possible to create a text resource file, RES_iw.properties, containing this text for use with isCOBOL's multilanguage sample program distributed with isCOBOL in the sample\multilanguage folder.

To create the file save the above text into a utf-8 encoded file named "RES_iw.txt" using notepad and then run native2ascii to create a properties file.

native2ascii -encoding utf8 RES_iw.txt RES_iw.properties

Edit the RES_iw.properties file to add the text resource names such as "usr=", "pwd=", etc, to the beginning of each line, and then reference these text resources in the COBOL program. For example, the resulting text resource properties might have the following:

usr=:\ufeff\u05e9\u05dd \u05de\u05e9\u05ea\u05de\u05e9
pwd=:\u05e1\u05d9\u05e1\u05de\u05d4

And the COBOL screen section would look like this:

      01   Login-Screen.
           03  label
               line      2
               col       2
               size      12
               title     r"usr"
               .
           03  label
               line      4
               col       2
               size      12
               title     r"pwd"
               .

Here are some sample screenshots:

»	View a 10-minute Webinar demonstration on the isCOBOL language resource feature.
»	View a Veryant Knowledge Base article entitled "How do I use text that has been translated into other languages in my screens and messages?"
»	Arrange code analysis report or to discuss your COBOL migration and localization needs in more detail by emailing info@veryant.com.

An example program demonstrating the isCOBOL resource language feature is also provided in the isCOBOL/sample/multilanguage directory of isCOBOL.