"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart."
-Nelson Mandela
Making your instance, or even parts of your instance, available in the languages that are comfortable for your users is a big win.
ServiceNow has several options to set the language for an instance session. It is important to understand the precedence of the different options.
The language seen by the user is determined in this order of precedence:
- language selected at login (this option overrides the options below)
- if no language was selected at login, the language selected in the header bar language picker is used
- if no language was selected at login or in the language picker, the user language setting in the User [sys_user] table is used
- if none of the options above are set, the system default language is used
To enable language selection at login:
- Navigate to System Properties > UI Properties.
- Find the property, Show the language select box on the login page to allow the user to specify the language they would like to be logged in with.
- Select Yes.
The Language option is displayed on the login screen.
To enable the language picker on the header bar, activate one or more Internationalization plugins:
- Navigate to System Definition > Plugins.
- Scroll through the list to find the plugins beginning with I18N.
- Click a plugin name. For example, I18N: German Translations.
- In Related Links, click Activate/Upgrade.
- In the Eureka version of ServiceNow, click the gear in the header bar to use the language picker.
To specify a language for a user:
- Navigate to User Administration > Users.
- In Language, select an option. (If the Language field is not visible, personalize the form.)
To change the system default language:
- Navigate to System Properties > System Localization.
- Find the property, Default language for the system (two character values).
- Enter the two character value code for the language you want to set as the default.
Here are some additional tips and tricks when setting instance language options:
- Right-to-left languages such as Hebrew can be used, but only certain parts of the interface are translated for these languages. For more information, see Support for Translating Right-to-Left Languages.
- ServiceNow offers twenty I18N internationalization plugins, but if the language you need is not available, you can translate an instance yourself using the information in Translating an Instance.
- Thinking about translating service catalog variables? Community member Jon Bebbington was, so fellow community members Ann Marie Costello and Christina Peters offered some advice.
- Sometimes it is the little problems that are the most annoying. Community member Katharina Pelikan needed to know how to translate the name of a gauge and David Legrand (Devoteam) was there to help.
- In the product documentation, our handy ServiceNow Glossary of Terms is available in eleven languages. Look for the Localized Glossaries link on the right side of the page.
ServiceNow offers more information about localizing and translating instances in the product documentation:
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