Supporting more languages

We can extend the Identity Service Center to support more languages by providing our own translations for all of the IBM-provided globalization files.

We must have read and write access to the customizable files and the directories where they are maintained. See Location of Identity Service Center customizable files and Customization of Identity Service Center files for details of where these files are located. Contact the system administrator if we do not have the necessary permissions.

Determine the value of the locale identifier for the language (xx) or language and country (xx_YY) associated with the translation to provide. For example: da (Danish) or ro_MO (Romanian, Moldova).

Use the following sections to work with the configuration files or the configuration properties from the IBM Security Identity Manager virtual appliance console:

  1. Create a custom version of the common.properties file for the new language.

    For example, create the common_xx_YY.properties file.

    You must create the properties file in the new locale. The server determines the list of available locales by searching for all variants of the common.properties file. We must also translate all of the properties in the common_xx_YY.properties file to the new language.

  2. If you previously restricted the locales that you support, we must modify your customized copy of the UIconfig.properties file to include the new language. Update the isim.ui.supportedLocales property in your custom version of this file to include the new locale, xx_YY. If all locales are supported, no change is required to the UIconfig.properties file because the default is to support all available locales.

  3. The new language might be a language that is read from right-to-left. In this case, we must modify your customized copy of the UIconfig.properties file to include the new language in the list of right-to-left locales. Update the isim.ui.rtlLocales property in your custom version of this file to include the new locale, xx_YY.

  4. Create custom versions of all supported language variants of the UILanguages*.properties files.

    Add a line to each file that specifies the display name for the new locale. This file is used to build the language selection control of the Login page. For example: xx_YY=New language name

  5. Create custom versions of all of the other files under custom/ui/nls for the new locale.
  6. Translate the text in all of the *_xx_YY.properties files into the new language.
  7. We can add a language for page help files only if you already provided custom help files, as described in Redirecting help content. Take these steps:

    1. Create a directory for the xx_YY locale at the same level as the directory containing the existing en (English) and other locales.
    2. Copy the custom help files for an existing language into the new xx_YY directory with the same directory structure.
    3. Translate the help files in the xx_YY directory to the new language.
    4. Update the <html> element in each of the help files to specify the locale of the new language, such as <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="xx-yy" lang="xx-yy">. If the new language is read from right-to-left, we must also modify the <html> element in each of the help files to specify the direction as "rtl". For example: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="xx-yy" lang="xx-yy" dir="rtl">

  8. If you previously restricted the help locales that you support, we must modify your customized copy of the UIHelp.properties file to include the new language. Update the helpLocales property in your custom version of this file to include the new locale, xx_YY. If all help locales are supported, no change is required to the UIHelp.properties file because the default is to support all available locales.

The Identity Service Center user interface is available to users in the new language translation. If you translated the help files, the Identity Service Center page help is also available to users in the new language translation.

In a managed-cluster environment, we must wait until after the configuration is synchronized to the application servers in the cluster. For information about synchronizing, see Synchronizing a member node with a primary node.

To view the new language translation, select the new language from the dropdown list of languages on the Identity Service Center Login page. Alternatively, configure your browser preferences to use the new language.

Parent topic: Identity Service Center user interface customization