Multi-Language Descriptions with the Translation Module

Multi-Language Descriptions with the Translation Module

Your company sells the same products across several markets, and sales wants every product description to show up in the buyer's language. Adding one field per language does not scale — Business Central's System Application ships a Translation module that stores per-record, per-field, per-language values instead, and your job is to wire a small product table to it.

Requirements

The starter already contains a table named "Localized Product" with a "Code" field (Code[20], the primary key) and a Description field (Text[100]) — you only need to finish its OnDelete trigger.

Create a codeunit named "Product Translations" with three public procedures:

procedure SetDescription(ProductCode: Code[20]; LanguageId: Integer; Value: Text)
procedure GetDescription(ProductCode: Code[20]; LanguageId: Integer): Text
procedure DuplicateProduct(FromCode: Code[20]; NewCode: Code[20])

Rules:

• SetDescription stores Value as the translation of the product's Description field for LanguageId. Storing a value for a language that already has one replaces it.
• GetDescription returns the value stored for exactly LanguageId. When nothing is stored for that language, it returns the product's Description field value instead.
• DuplicateProduct creates a new "Localized Product" with NewCode, the same Description, and a copy of every stored translation, in every language. The tests always pass an existing FromCode and an unused NewCode.
• Deleting a "Localized Product" record removes every translation stored for it — and only its own. Put the cleanup in the table's OnDelete trigger; the tests delete with Delete(true) so the trigger runs.

Use the System Application's Translation codeunit for the storage — that is the point of the task. Two things about it fail silently if missed: a record must be inserted before you attach translations (the module keys every row by the record's SystemId), and the two-argument Set/Get overloads work on the session language — only the overloads taking a LanguageId can satisfy the per-language rules above. The three-argument Get returns an empty string when nothing is stored for the requested language.

LanguageId is a Windows locale ID — an integer such as 1031 (German), 1036 (French) or 1030 (Danish). The tests pass several distinct IDs and never rely on the language the test session happens to run in.

Pick object IDs in the 50100–50199 range and reference other objects by name, never by ID.

What the tests check

The grading tests insert products and store generated description values for two languages, then read each language back; ask for a language with no stored value and expect the Description field value; store twice for the same language and expect the latest value; duplicate a product and expect the new record to carry the Description and both translations; and delete a product with Delete(true), using the module's own GetTranslations to assert that the product's two translations actually live in the Translation module before the deletion and zero rows remain after it, while a second product keeps its own translation.

Learn More

• Translation codeunit (System Application) — the full API you will build on: Set, Get, Copy, Delete, GetTranslations.
• OnDelete (table) trigger — where record cleanup belongs and when the trigger actually runs.
• Record.Delete method — why the RunTrigger argument decides whether your cleanup fires.
• Record.FieldNo method — how to hand the Description field's number to the Translation API.