Supported languages and locales

This section provides information pertinent to this release about language support and localized forms, installation in an international environment, and double-byte issues.

Internationalization is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes. Localization is the process of adapting software for a specific region or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text.

The Remedy AR System server and all its components are designed considering localization and internationalization. For more information, see  Localizing BMC Remedy AR System applications .

Remedy ITSM is built on Remedy AR System, which is a fully internationalized environment. This environment includes internal support for different character sets and a full suite of features that enable administrators to produce localized applications.

In addition, support is provided for a locale model in which users can specify their language and formatting preferences to have the application delivered in the style that is the most useful to them. This model includes delivering to different users, simultaneously, the same application in multiple languages with different formatting.

The following topics are provided:

Supported localized versions

Remedy ITSM Suite supports the following localized versions:

Supported character encodings

• Western Europe — Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish (Windows-1252)
• Central Europe — Albanian, Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, and Slovenian (Windows-1250)
• Cyrillic — Eastern European (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Macedonian), Mongolian, and some Central Asian (Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Uzbek [HTMLUATarsPlanAndInstallFinal2:Windows-1251])
• Baltic — Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian (Windows-1257)
• Traditional Chinese (Big5)
• Simplified Chinese (GB2312)
• Japanese (Shift-JIS and EUC-JP)
• Korean (EUC-KR)
• Thai (Windows-874) — Windows only
• Unicode (UTF-8)
• Unicode (UTF-16)

Unicode is a superset of the other character sets supported by Remedy AR System.

Non-Unicode AR System servers

A non-Unicode AR System server supports mixed-language environments if both of the following conditions are true:

• The languages belong to the same character set.
• The AR System server is running on a localized operating system with a localized version of the database.

Otherwise, characters might not be handled and displayed correctly. For example, the following combinations are supported because the languages belong to the same language group:

• Czech and Polish clients on a server set to Hungarian
• French, German, and English clients on a server set to German

Although languages from the same language group can be mixed, for some advanced locale-specific operations involving sorting date and time format, the language version of the server operating system and database must match that of the client to ensure optimal performance.

Unicode AR System servers

Because the Unicode character set is a superset of all the other character sets that BMC Remedy AR System supports, a Unicode AR System server supports combining languages from different language groups. For example,

• Spanish and Japanese
• Estonian and Croatian
• French and Polish
• Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese

Supported locales for Remedy Smart Reporting

Remedy Smart Reporting supports the locales provided with Remedy AR System, except Russian (RU) and Korean (KO). Remedy Smart Reporting does not provide support for other locales. The following languages are supported:

Localized forms

The language version of the forms and data installed with the AR System server is relative to the language selected for the installation.

With Remedy AR System, the following forms are localized in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, and Simplified Chinese:

• Alert Events
• Alert List
• AP: Rejection Justification
• AP:AdhocDialog
• AP:Admin-DeleteVerify
• AP:Alternate
• AP:Dtl-Sig-MoreInfoDialog
• AP:More Information
• AP:Password
• AP:Reassign
• AP:Show-Detail
• AP:ShowDetail-DeleteVerify
• Approval Central
• AR System Customizable Home Page
• AR System Report Console
• AR System Report Designer
• AR System User Central File
• AR System User Preference
• ARC:ConfirmDialog
• Business Segment-Entity Association
• Business Time Holidays
• Business Time Segment
• Business Time Shared Entity
• Business Time Shared Entity-Entity Association_Join_Join
• Business Time Workdays
• Group
• Home Page
• MFS:MultiFormSearch
• RD:Save As
• Report
• ReportCreator
• ReportSelection
• ReportType
• SHARE:Application_Interface
• SHARE:Application_Properties
• User
• User Password Change
• User Password Change Redirector
• User Password Management Configuration

If you install the AR System server on an operating system set up for French, German, Italian, or Spanish, the listed forms contain views in these languages as well as English. For example, if you install the AR System server on an Italian operating system, these forms contain views in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The data installed is the Italian data (if you chose that language's pack). All other language versions are also installed on your local drive and can be imported using Remedy Developer Studio and Remedy Data Import.

If you install the AR System server on a Japanese operating system, the listed forms contain views in English and in Japanese. The data installed by default is in Japanese. Only English and Japanese definitions and data are installed on your local drive and can be imported using Remedy Developer Studio and Remedy Data Import.

Data language and display language

If all your users work and communicate using a single language, the data language and display language that they use are the same. However, if you have users in different locations using the same server (for example, users in England, France, and Germany), you must pick a common data language in which the users will enter and search for data. Typically, this data language is the most common across all your user locales.

You can choose only one data language for each application installation, and you select this language during application installation. This requirement guarantees that users in France can find requests created in Germany or England because they are working with data in their common language.

Installing Remedy AR System in an international environment: Oracle on UNIX

When you install Remedy AR System in an international environment on UNIX, you must create an Oracle database with a character set that is capable of storing your data. Also, you must set up the database NLS parameter to support the database NLS functionality. Otherwise, the wrong character set is used for conversion in forms and data. In addition, you will not be able to import data correctly. The Remedy AR System does not take care of these database NLS setup issues.

Check the following language environment variables before installation:

• LANG
• NLS_LANG

To determine the current value of LANG, use the echo $LANG command at the shell in which you plan to run the installer.

To determine which locales are installed on the system, use the locale -a command.

When installing a Unicode AR System server, set LANG to a Unicode locale code; typically these end in UTF-8 or utf8. See the appropriate operating system and database documentation.