If you miss any content, please leave it as a comment and I will add it to this article.
| Table of Contents |
My library Knowledge Sources To Go is very popular, but it was intended mainly as a thematically grouped guide to standard sources and was provided by me as a PDF file. For certain topics, however, there is so much content that I can no longer include it in that document, as it cannot continue to grow forever.
For this reason, I have decided to handle such topics in individual community articles like this one instead.
What is Globalization?
Globalization (often abbreviated as g11n) is a broad term that represents all the tasks and activities associated with delivering an end-user experience in languages other than English. There are three key elements to globalization:
Internationalization (often abbreviated as i18n)
ensures that a process or application works without any language or locale dependency. For example, an application to buy a laptop from IT will follow a work process that is agnostic to the location of the purchaser.
Localization (often abbreviated as l10n)
includes adding elements to a process or application specifically for its region without impacting its intended functionality. Using the same laptop example, localization means offering this functionality in the purchaser’s language of choice, local currency, local date format, and local language knowledge base articles.
Translation (often abbreviated as t9n)
is rendering text into another language, either by machine or human.
Product Information (Dynamic Translation)
Entry point to the official product information pages.
Product Documentation (Localization)
Entry point to the official product documentation.
Product Documentation (Localization Framework)
Entry point to the official product documentation.
Product Documentation (Dynamic Translation)
Entry point to the official product documentation.
Support your globalization with well-planned localization
This workbook will help you to identify how to structure your platform team to implement localization, what your accountability and decision-making structure should look like, how to approach translation, and how to develop, build, and test, so your localization approach provides a consistent user experience that’s easy to scale.
ServiceNow Globalization Guide
This guide will provide an overview of what our up-to-date product Globalization capabilities are for varying Products and Documentation.
Trainings & Courses
ServiceNow's globalization experts designed this learning path based on experience gained localizing thousands of end-to-end processes. By leveraging their insight, platform owners, developers, and implementers will be confident in not just what buttons to press but also the logistical considerations when languages other than English are in play.
Explore Globalized Architecture Solutioning
Director of Globalization at ServiceNow; Alex Coope; explains how to globalize processes leveraging architecture principles to foster reuse across countries and geographies. Alex examines the building blocks of a globalized process and the implications of designing for a fully globalized experience. He walks through how to evaluate the effectiveness of your solution using targeted questions. Lastly, Alex describes how the localization framework can facilitate the translation activities of your process.
Articles & Blog Posts
2019-12-01, by ServiceNow - Now Community
TechNow Ep 70 | Translating your instance
As your organization grows, it's common that you will need to address multiple languages on your instance. Activating plugins is only part of the solution - there are tables to be aware of, properties to learn, and scripting practices to follow. Join the TechNow team as they guide you through everything you need to know to support a multi-lingual instance.
2021-02-03, by Maik Skoddow
Translate a Workspace Home Page
At the Community sometimes the question arises how to translate the Workspace Homepage, especially the labels of the CSM Workspace Home Page
2021-06-27, by ServiceNow Support
I18N Localization - Tips and Tricks (🔒)
This article provides simple technical methods and suggestions to help make localizing a ServiceNow instance easier.
2021-05-18, by GlideFast Consulting
Localization Framework + Dynamic Translation in ServiceNow Quebec
Paul Grupe gives a demo on Localization Framework, a new application in the Quebec release, and explores functionalities of Dynamic Translation in ServiceNow.
2021-09-13, by Alex Coope
In-Platform Language Support Guide
This post will act as a stickied one-stop shop with as many useful links as possible on the topic and will be regularly updated.
2021-10-05, by Alex Coope
Extending the Localization Framework to Portal Announcements
As some of you know, in Quebec we launched the "Localization Framework". Which is a new functionality where you can leverage "artefacts" to identify the translatable elements to action accordingly. Think of LF as an engine, and the "artifacts" as the gears.
2021-10-25, by Alex Coope
When User Experience (UX) collides with Localization - portal language switcher options
In this article I want to go through the notion of User Experience (UX) and how it is a super important concept, which is even more true when multiple languages are in-scope.
2021-12-03, by Alex Coope
Surveys / Assessments and how to translate them
ASo, I've seen a few posts recently about Surveys, Assessments and Quizzes, with questions ranging from "can they be translated?" to "how can they be translated?" or even "should we create more than one survey?". In this post I'm going to try and demystify them and other languages, here goes.
2021-12-09, by Alex Coope
Emails in other languages - Easy to Complex
I've been seeing quite a few posts recently about how to create / define emails in other languages. Naturally (as with most things in the platform) there are a few ways to achieve this which partly comes down to requirements, it also comes down to how complex you need it to be. So let's delve into the options, discuss them, and go through the pros and cons of each approach.
2022-02-31, by Alex Coope
Everything you ever wanted to know about the 5 translation tables
I've recently been seeing quite a few questions posted asking how the 5 UI translation tables work (in-fact, some questions suggesting it's 3 or 4 tables rather than 5). I can assure you, it is 5. So let's go through each of them, how they work, why they are the way they are and how you can use them. This will be quite a long post, so buckle up, have your popcorn and favorite beverage at the ready and let's begin.
2022-02-23, by Alex Coope
Need to translate a Portal? - check this
So it seems I caused a bit of a stir with my last webinar at the Employee Center Academy. In that, it's become the single most asked question I now get - "how did you do it?" (referring to localizing the portal into Japanese).
2022-03-01, by Alexandra Lemer
When using our products in any language other than English, you might have noticed that some of the text was still appearing in English.
2022-04-21, by Alex Coope
In-platform translation capabilities - SanDiego
I often get asked "what are the translation capabilities in the platform?" in the sense of how can they be used. Coupled with this, there is often a mis-understanding around when Dynamic Translation can be used vs when it should be used. So, let's go through that in this post and discuss what in-platform products / capabilities we have that when used in the right way can empower you to achieve what you're after.
2022-05-25, by Alex Coope
Non-English inbound emails not being identified as a Reply / Forward ? - check this
I was in a call with a Customer this past week and they mentioned that they were having issues with non-English emails being sent into their instance which weren't being correctly picked up as a "reply" or "forward" correctly and so their Inbound Email Actions weren't triggering as expected. I had a quick think and my hunch turned out to be right. So, let's go through what's happening in this scenario and how to resolve it.
2022-08-08, by Mark Roethof
Multi-lingual notification support
Working on multi-language instances, a common request is sending emails in various languages. Out-of-the-box, ServiceNow does not support this. I have created solutions for customers in the past to mimic this, though it always felt like a huge gap within ServiceNow. It used to... with the Tokyo release "Multi-lingual notification support" is introduced!
2022-07-28, by Alex Coope
Need to find where a translation comes from? - check this
I was in a call with a Customer the other day and they were struggling to find where a particular translation was coming from. Reason being was that they were in their UAT phase of their implementation and so they wanted to make an edit. So, let's delve into our options and how we can tackle this in the simplest possible way.
2022-08-26, by Alex Coope
As the platform has been growing over the years, the use-cases have massively expanded. For example, when I started my SN journey way back when, we only needed to consider purely internal employee scenarios and so the expectation of an end-user needing to change their session language was so rare it wasn't really a need to cater for in portals. However, now that we have the likes of CSM etc, things are very different. Not only could a user need to change their language via the portal, they may also not yet be a registered / authenticated user. So in the Tokyo release we've added a whole bunch of features to cater for that.
2022-08-26, by Alex Coope
Need to translate a configurable workspace? - check this
Now that the Tokyo release is out and people have started to play around with UIB for a few releases and started to learn it's intricacies, it's time to start going through how translations with this new UI concept (we internally called "Project Polaris") works.
Podcasts & Videos
2021-05-19, by ServiceNow Support
Video series covering different aspects and user experiences:
- Overview
- Dynamic translation on forms and activity streams
- Integrating with Microsoft Azure translation service
- Integrate with IBM translation service
- Agent Chat
- Integrating with Google Cloud Translator
2021-05-06, by ServiceNow Now Community
Provide global support with Dynamic Translation for Agent Chat
Overview of the Localization Framework feature for streamlining the translation of ServiceNow product content to other languages.
2021-07-16, by ServiceNow Support
Overview of the Localization Framework feature for streamlining the translation of ServiceNow product content to other languages.
2021-11-17, by ServiceNow - Now Community
HR Service Delivery Academy - Internationalization & Localization
Do you have employees around the globe? Localization is a platform capability that controls items like translations, dates, and times to ensure employees have a more personalized experience in a language that is native to them. Tune in to learn about how to localize, how to globalize a knowledge base, translation techniques for custom content, and more.
2022-01-21, by ServiceNow - Now Community
Employee Center Academy: Localization and Multi-language Support
In today's latest session of Employee Center Academy, Product Manager Pooja Gupta, Director of Globalization Deployment Alex Coope, and Principal Product Manager Aditi Priya walk you through multi-language support on Employee Center.
2022-07-27, by Secretary of Simplification
Detect Languages in Incoming Emails
Using Dynamic Translation in ServiceNow, we can detect the language of a text and use that in our business processes. This video uses the example of detecting the language of an incoming email in order to lookup and reference the corresponding language skill for a new incident.
2022-10-25, by ServiceNow Dev Program
Notification Translations in Tokyo
Join us as Developer Advocate, Lauren McManamon demonstrates the improvements to doing translated notifications in the Tokyo release.
2023-02-16 by ServiceNow - Now Community
Introduction to Platform Internationalization
In this session, Alex Coope (Director of Globalization Deployment, Internationalization) will lead us through the Localization Framework and the various mechanisms and tools on the Now Platform that help you and your employees work seamlessly in a multi-language environment.
Troubleshooting
Known Error Portal
Pre-configured filter for the respective topic. Remove the query string or modify the filters on the left side if you want to narrow down the search results in a different way.
Selected Articles
Translation Troubleshooting 🔒 (KB0610453)
Thousands separator value of Knowledge Table (KB) under Number Maintenance displaying dot instead of... (KB0688939)
Translating Service Portal Menu Items' labels (KB0693325)
System default language is in [language code].[country code] format will corrupt the date picker (ca... (KB0715685)
Fields are not getting translated to the correct language on the form view (KB0720320)
PDF export localization for thousand delimiter and decimal delimiter is not the same in the report U... (KB0782293)
Frequent cache flushes after upgrade caused by large number of language plugins (i18n) installed (KB0794030)
Inefficient load of customizations for System Localization -> Non-Translated Items (KB0813304)
Update Missing translations in Workspace (KB0864130)
Record producer Question Choice translations not working on Service Portal (KB0955285)
Transform script is not obtaining the correct currency Exchange rate and instead uses the default (KB0957346 🔒)
Lock/Unlock option in the translation UI page (sn_lf_comparison_ui) is throwing an error and doesn't... (KB1113186)
