Object Types for Translation 

Use

The texts that are (or can be) displayed in software do not all have the same function. For example, Screen Painter texts often describe fields or pushbuttons on dialog boxes, which means they are frequently seen by end users. However, function groups are descriptions of function modules that are mostly seen by developers only. They are rarely seen by end users. In SAP systems, the texts are therefore assigned to different object types. These object types indicate how the texts are used in the software. For example, Screen Painter texts belong to object types SRT1 to SRT8, whereas function groups belong to object types LBT1 to LBT3.

The frequency with which texts of different object types are seen varies from one type of end user to another. For example, all of the texts that are displayed on the interface of transactions executed by end users in user departments must be available in the working language of those end users. Texts that are primarily intended for developers, such as function groups, are of less interest. Depending on the target audience of your translations, it is possible that some object types are not relevant for translation at all, which means you do not want to translate them. You must therefore determine which object types are translated into which target languages in your SAP system. This enables you to reduce the translation scope of languages that you consider less important.

Object types are grouped together, according to their importance, to form object groups. You can release an entire object group for translation, or individual object types in an object group.

Integration

After you have activated an object type for a target language, all of the source texts of this object type appear in the worklists and statistics for this target language after an evaluation has run. If an object type is locked for a target language, the source texts of this object type do not appear in the worklists and statistics. If all object types are locked for a specific target language, no evaluations take place for this language.

If you decide at a later stage to exclude a target language from translation, you can delete the object type from the list of object types defined for translation into this language. This excludes the target language from all future evaluations. This setting is activated when you run an evaluation with deletion. For more information, see Creating an Evaluation Run.

Automatic distribution is defined per object type. It therefore makes sense to determine which object types need translating, and to define the distribution parameters for the various translation-relevant object types, at the same time.

See also:

Defining Object Types for Translation