The basis for a translatable language is unambiguous semantics. A multi-lingual term database ensures that the same term is used for the same concept across the whole application, in all documentation and consistently across translations. A term is only translated once.
Terms in IFS/Application are mainly used for two purposes;
A term consists of three different parts, the term itself, a set of display names and one or several usage definitions. The actual term (name) is one or several words with a precise meaning, in a specific domain. Apart from the term domain a term also has an owner. Both domain and owner is used to organize and exploring the terms. Note: This is only available on sites with an IFS Development License.
Figure 1. This picture shows the complete entity diagram for a term.
You can in the figure below see a simplified state diagram for the term entity. The terms starts in a preliminary state that can be consider as a request for a new term. Verified terms in state Preliminary can be Released, this enables translation (Note! This in only available on sites with an IFS Development License.) of the particular term. When translations is made the term ends up in a Translated state. It is not possible to alter a term in such a this state. It's therefore possible for authorized users to change the state to Revised which enables modification.
Figure 2. This picture shows a simplified state diagram for terms.
A term has one or several textual appearances (display names), such as full name, short name, abbreviation and pluralism. Up to six different names can be registered for a specific term. Each display name has a flag that indicates if the name is translatable or not. The translation is thus made for the terms display names, not the actual term name.
A term has one or several usage definitions. The definition is the basis for the user documentation. The definition is the textual description about the term and how the term is used in the application. A term can be used differently depending on context and functionality, thus can a term have a several usage definitions. An usage definition has a state diagram of it's own, it's however conceptual equal to the state diagram for the term, see figure 2 above.
Apart from the state diagram so has an usage definition also a lifecycle. This lifecycle chain is only used when the usage is in a Preliminary state. The purpose of the lifecycle is to follow up progress of the authoring and quality work for a particular definition.
Read more about how to work with terms in IFS Translation Manager. Note: This is only available on sites with an IFS Development License.