Progress
Translation Manager
Guide


Creating Message Statements

You should be aware that some message statements might be difficult to translate. For example, message statements that contain compound phrases that follow the noun-verb-object rules of English do not translate well into languages that follow different grammatical rules. Sometimes developers create message statements with embedded SKIP statements to align the message statement evenly on the screen. While this hard-coded alignment might look attractive in the source language, it might look awkward when you translate the message into another language.

For example, the following code contains three text phrases that most likely will be translated out of context of one another:

When you translate these text phrases, the message will probably wrap awkwardly. To solve this problem, ask developers to avoid SKIP statements and to create message statements that do not split into text phrases that follow the grammar rules of a particular language. For example, in place of the above code, use one of the following code segments to display a similar message:

DEFINE VARIABLE fname AS CHAR.
MESSAGE fname SKIP(1) "is invalid under DOS. Please try again."
VIEW-AS ALERT-BOX WARNING.

DEFINE VARIABLE fname AS CHAR.
MESSAGE SUBSTITUTE (The filename you entered, &1, is invalid 
    under DOS.", fname).
VIEW-AS ALERT-BOX WARNING. 


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