Dictionaries

Purpose of dictionaries

To create a multilingual form, it is necessary to prepare the translation for all tables (accounts, reporting forms, FST items, custom dimension elements, form names), so that the descriptions can be shown in the language defined for the specific user, with which the form is accessed (see User settings).

Note: in CCH Tagetik, it is possible to specifically set a reporting language that is different from the system language and the language set in the user profile. For more details, see Localization settings page.

However, a form may contain other useful fields that are not included among the tables. All these fields can be translated into several languages using a dictionary item.

In particular, a dictionary item is useful for obtaining the following outcomes:

• set a description for a placeholder or formula (e.g. "Total")
• override the description used as the existing header of an element within a matrix (e.g. when the filter on the column contains several ‘OR’ elements)
• insert multilingual text in the form

Dictionary items can be defined both within the matrix and outside of it. The same item can also be used in several forms by creating shared items. Each dictionary item is identified by two elements:

• a code
• a description in the configured languages.

Some dictionary items may be very frequently used (e.g. "Total"). To save the translations of these items once only and make them available for use in several forms, shared dictionary items are created. These items can then be retrieved when necessary.

The Dict cell field allows you to retrieve the description of the shared dictionary item in a certain language, based on the code. See Non-dimensional functions.

In particular, web forms support the translation of dictionary items for all Reporting languages, only for dictionaries set up on the web.

Whereas translation of dictionary items is not supported for local dictionaries entered directly into the Excel add-in.

Importing a dictionary

It is possible to create a table of shared items using the Import dictionary wizard, which allows you to generate items with descriptions corresponding to those used in the primary language forms, but with codes generated on the fly by the system. In particular, the new codes have the following characteristics:

• they only contain permitted characters (see Generic activities on the pages of CCH Tagetik)
• they do not contain spaces at the start or end
• they concatenate words up to a maximum of 25 characters

Alternatively, it is possible to import items into the shared table by generating the relative codes based on progressive numbering.