Pattern translation enables you to translate source texts that often appear in the system and consist of the same source text string plus variable non-language specific characters. The non-language-specific characters are not relevant for translation and can be one of the following types of character:

• Upper-case characters (SAPLMSLLS; for example)
• Numeric characters (23, 99, 1000, for instance)
• Special characters (For example, ? $ & ( _ , and so on)

Ideally you want to translate the same source text (in this case Programm) consistently and you want to copy the non-language-specific variable string, as this does not need translating. You also want to do this in one step to avoid translating the same source text in the same way 20 times, once for each different variable string.

If you use pattern translation you can guarantee the following:

• Translation is consistent
• Translation will take place automatically using automatic distribution
• Translations cannot be changed by translators with status 3 or lower

Therefore pattern translation enables coordinators to define a standard translation for texts that frequently occur in slightly different forms, and then to distribute these translations to save time and costs.

You define standard translations for pattern texts in Proposal Pool Administration, using a PATTERN worklist.

In order for a PATTERN worklist to be created in Proposal Pool Administration, the where-used list data must be refreshed during the worklist evaluation run. To do this, you need to set the Write where-used list data indicator when you create an evaluation in transaction SLWB.

Once you have refreshed the where-used list data, a PATTERN worklist should appear in transaction STMA under WL administration.

A PATTERN worklist will contain all the source texts that match the criteria for pattern translation. In other words, all source texts where the text element occurs 10 times or more in the system, each time with a different set of language-independent characters.

The system displays the element of source text that remains the same and the non-language-specific characters that vary each time are represented by &01&. If there are two or more variable elements in the source text, then each further variable is represented by &02&, &03&, etc.

As yet, no target texts exist for any of these "pattern" texts.

You now need to process each entry in this list. You can either:

• Define a target text translation for the source texts and flag this entry for automatic distribution
• Decide not to implement pattern translation for this source text and proceed to the next entry in your worklist

Once you have finished editing your PATTERN worklist (in other words, after you have defined pattern translations for all those entries and flagged these proposals for automatic distribution), your activities will have the following results:

• A proposal will be created for each source text that contains the pattern term plus language-independent variables
• Each individual proposal will be flagged for automatic distribution
• The next time that an automatic distribution run takes place, the defined target texts will be automatically distributed, depending on the update options you selected