RE: BPCS' NLV product -- BPCS-L

Lisa,

Report's are also based on message literal - obviously the data isn't but
the layout is message based.

What I consider incomplete is the help text.  Screens and reports can be
provided in the language of choice (you could probably convert a lot of it
yourself) but pressing help to understand the screens will, as far as I'm
aware, produce US English description - not good for the end user.

Regards

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-bpcs-l@midrange.com [mailto:owner-bpcs-l@midrange.com]On
Behalf Of Lisa.Abney@sensient-tech.com
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2001 8:47 PM
To: BPCS-L@midrange.com
Subject: Re: BPCS' NLV product



Genyphyr ...

Actually, the exact opposite is true ... far from being "Anglo-centric", we
made the offer and assumption that we would use the Spanish version of BPCS
in our Mexican implementations.  It was our Mexican associates who said
they would be very comfortable using the English software ... while many of
the "workers" don't speak much English, they are very proud of their
efforts to learn, and look at this as another way of reinforcing their
English proficiency.  The consultants (again, a very large Mexican
consulting firm with a great deal of experience implementing BPCS in Latin
American countries) were the ones who told us the translated software is
not a very good translation ... being very limited in Spanish, I have no
idea whether this is true or not.

I am curious what happens with generated reports in the NLV software.
Since they don't use literals, do you rewrite all those reports into the
various languages?  (Keep in mind, I'm at 4.0.5 ... maybe this has been
managed in later versions?)

Another factor that certainly entered in to our decision to stay with the
English version is the fact that, even though we are running the software
on the same AS400, in the same environment, we were told by our salesperson
we had to purchase a complete new license to the full product to get the
Spanish version ... obviously, nothing you have control of, but certainly a
big $$$ consideration!

Lisa Abney
Development Manager
Sensient Flavors




                    "Genyphyr
                    Novak"                 To:     <BPCS-L@midrange.com>
                    <novakg@ssax.co        cc:
                    m>                     Subject:     Re: BPCS' NLV
product
                    Sent by:
                    owner-bpcs-l@mi
                    drange.com


                    07/11/2001
                    11:38 AM
                    Please respond
                    to BPCS-L






I have to say that I was somewhat taken aback by the Anglo-centric tone in
this attached note.

Not everyone speaks English, nor should they have to, especially in their
own countries! We have many many customers with the Spanish language
version
of BPCS installed, both in Spain and all over Latin America, including in
Mexico, Columbia and Argentina. When Spanish-speaking users call our North
American Support Center, we have Spanish-speaking consultants who help
translate the call logs. I quite disagree that one can simply load the
English version of BPCS at a non-English speaking site and simply expect
people to 'get used to it'!

And I will mention that our (quite  human) language translators are
certainly not 'machines',  and have gone through BPCS training courses to
get an understanding of the product and what the screens mean so that the
translations are not literal, but will make sense in the language into
which
they are translated. Additionally, if translation do errors exist, they can
be corrected via BMRs which update the message literals if they are
reported
to the Support Center.

There is certainly no good reason to avoid implementing an NLV at a site
where English is not the first language, since it is not a true separate
'version' of BPCS - the BPCS programs are exactly the same. The message
files for Spanish or any other language, are automatically placed higher in
the library list for those users as they log into BPCS. It is not a big
deal
to 'implement' at all and would make the non-English speaking end-user much
happier, I am sure.

Double Byte languages (Chinese, Japanese etc.) are a different matter, as
those programs do undergo a process to double byte enable the display files
and physical files, so BMRS are done separately for those languages since
the program objects and files are actually different from single byte BPCS.
However, with V8, the BMRs for double byte can be generated as easily as
for
single byte due to changes in AS/SET, which will make BMR support of DBCS
much faster.

If you have a V6.x BPCS version with an NLV, I also highly recommend
getting
BMR 39659 which corrects a problem where the 'Fat Client' applications were
not setting the library list properly for NLV versions, causing extra
configuration work for system administrators to work around this. This is
now corrected by the BMR, so that you can maintain 1 user library for all
languages, rather than having a separate user library for each language.

Genyphyr Novak
SSA GT

----- Original Message -----
From: <Lisa.Abney@sensient-tech.com>
To: <BPCS-L@midrange.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2001 5:38 PM
Subject: Re: BPCS' NLV product


>
> Gary ... Just a little additional feedback.  We are in the early process
of
> implementing BPCS in two facilities in Mexico.  We talked with both our
> facilities there, and the Mexican consultants we are working with, and
were
> told not to bother with the Spanish version of BPCS.  Even the people who
> don't speak English very quickly figure out how to use the screens they
> need to use, even if they can't read the words!  The consultants (who
work
> extensively with BPCS all over Mexico) said they don't know of anyone who
> has ever installed the Spanish version!  They said they had looked at it,
> but that it appeared that the translation was "machine generated" rather
> than manually done, and that doesn't work very well!
>
> Someone else responded with a good description of how the language
supports
> actually works, and the comments about only working as well as you are
> diligent about using message literals instead of constants was very true.
> Also, at least at the 4.0.5 version, reports are not done with message
> literals even in base BPCS.  (We tried to do this ourselves when we added
> new reports, but it is a real pain!)
>
> (My personal opinion ... in my two recent trips to Mexico, I have been
> amazed at how well many of the people speak English!  Even those who
claim
> they don't speak it can often read it well enough to get the gist of what
> you're saying.  While they often apologize for their "poor" English, I
keep
> reassuring them it's lightyears ahead of my Spanish!  Even if you're
> considering a Spain implementation rather than Mexican, you may find this
> to be true there, as well.)
>
> Lisa Abney
> Development Manager
> Sensient Flavors
>
>
>
>

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