Languages - Erply Wiki

1. Background

Text content in Erply—product names, product descriptions, various classifiers—can be translated into multiple languages. Erply can be a backend for multi-language webshops, and users can browse back office or use point-of-sale applications in different languages.

On each account, there is a specific set of activated languages. To activate additional languages, please contact customer support.

2. Language identifiers in use

Due to legacy limitations, a language identifier does not always mean what it appears to mean. The legacy identifiers are non-standard three-letter codes, and there are exactly 10 of them:

"eng", "spa", "ger", "rus", "swe", "fin", "gre", "est", "lat", "lit"

We have been "repurposing" these identifiers, and the repurposing rules have been defined by country. For example, on Canadian and French accounts, language identifier "lat" actually refers to French, not Latvian.

In newer APIs, we have been avoiding this issue, and are using standard ISO-639-1 two-letter codes for identifying languages—but this also means there are two sets of identifiers in use.

Below you will find a table listing all the language identifiers in use, and their meanings.

3. API interfaces

3.1. Erply API

A "save" call accepts input fields "nameENG", "nameGER", "nameSPA" and so on (corresponding to the identifiers above)
A "get" call typically outputs data in one language only. To specify which one, pass input parameter "lang=ger", for example. If the parameter is omitted, API returns data in account's default language.
- Some calls support input parameter "getAllLanguages=1", which will make the API return fields "nameENG", "nameGER", "nameSPA" and so on.

3.2. Other APIs

API calls input and output a translatable property (eg. a product's name) as a JSON structure (containing key-value pairs: language code + name in the respective language). Examples:

"name": {
    "en": "Example", 
    "nl":"Voorbeeld"
}

or:

"name": {
    "en": "Other", 
    "zh_Hans": "其他"
}

Configuration parameters

To detect which languages have been activated on an account, here are the configuration parameters that must be inspected.

Parameter name	Format of the value	Example	Parsing requirements
langs	A comma-separated list of languages enabled on the account (three-letter identifiers)	"eng,rus,fin"	Ignore any list elements that do not match the known 10 identifiers.
country	Two-letter uppercase country identifier	"FI"
default_language	Three-letter identifier of the default language	"fin"

Language mapping

The following table defines how the legacy identifiers must be interpreted. (This is the full list of all languages currently supported.)

Language or script name	Standard language code	Legacy identifier	Specific country?
English	en	eng
Estonian	et	est
Latvian	lv	lat
Russian	ru	rus
Finnish	fi	fin
Greek	el	gre
Spanish	es	spa
German	de	ger
Swedish	sv	swe
Lithuanian	lt	lit
Danish	da	spa	DK,FO
Dutch	nl	gre	NL,BE
Polish	pl	gre	PL
French	fr	lat	CA,FR,BE,LU,CH,MU,MA,CD,SN,CI,TN,DZ
Simplified Chinese	zh_Hans	lit	CN,TW,HK,MO
Traditional Chinese	zh_Hant	lat	CN,TW,HK,MO
Italian	it	lat	IT
Turkish	tr	lit	TR
Thai	th	fin	TH
Faroese	fo	lit	DK,FO
Vietnamese	vi	lat	VN
Arabic	ar	lit	AE,BH,DJ,DZ,EG,JO,KM,KW,LB,LY,MA,MR,OM,PS,QA,SA,SD,SO,TD,TN,YE
Czech	cs	est	CZ
Norwegian	no	gre	NO,SE,FI,DK,FO,EE,IS
Hebrew	he	est	IL,GB
Bulgarian	bg	fin	BG

Since the number of languages needed on one particular account is limited, we do not use locale codes at the moment (language + specific country, eg. "pt-PT" versus "pt-BR").

Chinese is a special case, as here the distinction is between scripts, not languages.

Sources:

Example

If the configuration parameters are "langs" = "eng,gre" and "country" = "NL", the enabled languages are English and Dutch (because in the Netherlands, identifier "gre" has been re-used to signify Dutch).

For this account, new REST APIs emit & accept language codes "en" and "nl".

If, however, the configuration parameters are "langs" = "eng,gre" and "country" = "US", the enabled languages are English and Greek. There is no custom override for country US and lang "gre", so it must be interpreted as Greek by default.

For this account, new REST APIs emit & accept language codes "en" and "el".

9. Languages