SAP Translation for Your Rollout

Are you rolling out SAP internationally? Are you wondering how to translate the customizations you made into the local languages? We can help you successfully execute your SAP language translation project using proven best practices, as well as our SAP-certified i18n Translation Manager SAP add-on.

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Our Tools and Services Help Your SAP Speak the Local Language

When you have customized your SAP to fit your needs, there are a lot of texts in your SAP systems which SAP language packs do not cover. Whether it is custom ABAP or SAP Fiori developments, customizing texts, PDF forms, or master data — once you roll out this new functionality to another country, some of your English or German texts will have to be translated into the local language to support your users.

Get the Help You Need

— advice to get started, or a team to run your translation project

You want to know where to start with SAP translation and what your options are? Or your rollout is underway, and you need to translate now? Bring in an SAP Language Consultancy Partner with 10+ years of experience, and get SAP translation right.

Keep Costs in Check

— translate only what you need, and no more

Identify the texts created as part of your SAP implementation, define the right translation scope, and leverage our expertise and best practices to build the right translation process for your SAP rollout. With our approach and tools, you will know what your project will cost before you get started.

Use an SAP-certified Add-on

— reduce translation and project management effort

Automatically analyze custom Fiori apps and Z transactions and translate your SAP texts into in 40+ languages using our certified i18n Translation Manager SAP add-on. Make use of SAP Translation Hub and Git intergration to reduce manual effort, while deliverying high-quality SAP translations that use correct SAP terminology.

A Partner You Can Trust

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SAP Language Consultancy Partner

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Experience and Expertise

Our company's team has worked on countless successful SAP projects over the years, both for SAP customers and SAP partners. Our approach covers all 40 languages supported by SAP, starting with English and German, and including all European and all major Asian languages.

Flexibility and Openness

Projects come in all shapes and sizes. Whether you only need a solution to one specific problem, you're interested in an introductory workshop, or you are looking for help for a large-scale translation project – you'll find us to be flexible and proactive. And we are happy to share our expertise and train your team, too.

Tools and Custom Development

We have built what we think is the ultimate SAP translation tool, and we are constantly improving and extending it. But sometimes, one size does not fit all, which is why we can create ABAP-based solutions tailored to your needs, or extend our standard solution to cover your use case.

Our Tools and Services Help Your SAP Speak the Local Language

When you have customized your SAP to fit your needs, there are a lot of texts in your SAP systems which SAP language packs do not cover. Whether it is custom ABAP or SAP Fiori developments, customizing texts, PDF forms, or master data — once you roll out this new functionality to another country, some of your English or German texts will have to be translated into the local language to support your users.

Get the Help You Need

— advice to you get started, or a team to run your translation project

You want to know where to start with translation and what your options are? Or your rollout is underway, and you need to translate now? Bring in an SAP Language Consultancy Partner with 10+ years of experience, and get SAP translation right.

Find out which transactions or apps are used at each location, define the right translation scope, choose the right translation tools and the right process. With our approach, you know what your project will cost before you start.

Keep Costs in Check

— translate only what you need, and no more

Are you rolling out SAP internationally? Are you wondering how to translate the customizations you made into the local languages? We can help you successfully execute your SAP language translation project using proven best practices, as well as our i18n Translation Manager SAP translation tool.

When you have customized your SAP to fit your needs, there are a lot of texts in your SAP systems which SAP language packs do not cover. Whether it is custom ABAP or SAP Fiori developments, customizing texts, PDF forms, or master data — once you roll out this new functionality to another country, some of your English or German texts will have to be translated into the local language to support your users.

Our company's team has worked on countless successful SAP projects over the years, both for SAP customers and SAP partners. Our approach covers all 40 languages supported by SAP, starting with English and German, and including all European and all major Asian languages. And as an SAP partner, we can help you access SAP Standard tools such as SAP Translation Hub. Then there are our own products and solutions for SAP translations help businesses hit the ground running and implement a sustainable process that minimizes translation costs.

With more than 10 years of experience in this field, we can help you get SAP translation right.

How Can we Help with SAP Translation?


Initial Analysis and Translation Scoping

We get you started with SAP translation, giving you an overview of possible processes, tools and automation options. We also perform an initial analysis of the custom texts that exist in your SAP systems, enabling you to define your exact translation scope. We also provide a cost estimate for translation. With this information, you can start planning and draw up a budget.

SAP Language Consultancy

We provide advice on SAP internationalization and translation and solve technical issues. Why is this text not being displayed in the correct language? How do we transport translations? These are examples of questions we can help with as part of our translation consulting offering. Whether you just need an answer to a single question, or you require ongoing support, we are here for you.

Translation Tool Implementation

We help you implement and get started with our i18n Translation Manager, our SAP add-on for SAP translation. We make our translation tool work for you, building a translation process that fits your SAP implementation, SAP landscape, and project methodology. Then we help your team to learn how to run SAP translation on their own and provide support where needed.

Trainings and Workshops

If you aim to handle translation in-house using our i18n Translation Manager add-on, we can provide workshops and trainings to get your team up to speed. Maybe you want to outsource the linguistic work, but keep the project management in-house? Or you want your colleagues in your locations abroad to perform the actual translations? We show you how to hit the ground running.

Translation Process Consultancy

We analyze and improve your SAP translation process, or we design processes from scratch that are efficient, sustainable and offer a high degree of automation. In most cases, it takes litte more than a day to identify potential improvements and outline the first changes.

Translation Project Management

We run and staff your SAP translation project, from the initial translation effort to continuous translation of ongoing developments. We can act as an interface between your internal teams and stakeholders and your external service providers.

SAP Add-ons for Translation

For typical use cases that we have seen in many projects, we have created standard solutions. Whether you need to pinpoint the exact customizing texts you need to translation, you need to export master data for tranlation, or you need to integrate Fiori texts into your workflow – we have the SAP add-ons your need for your translation project.

Custom ABAP Development

If you need a specialized solution that the SAP Standard does not cover, we can create custom ABAP solutions for your SAP translation needs. Our intimate knowledge of the SAP translation environment and our experience in the field help us create the solution that is right for your business.

SAP Translation Services

We can also take care of the physical translation of the texts in your SAP translation project into up to 40+ languages.

Frequently Asked Questions


What is SAP Translation?

Companies most often translate texts in their SAP systems when they roll out the changes and additions that they have made to their SAP installation to a foreign location. This includes custom developments such as Z transactions and custom SAP Fiori apps, whose user interfaces need to be available in the local language, as well as customizing texts, forms, and so on.

What are the best practices for translating custom SAP transactions and reports?

Over the years, we have developed SAP translation best practices. A good starting point for customers is to request our Getting Started with SAP Translation whitepaper. We have also written a large number of blog posts detailing various best practices, such as which editing environment to choose when translating SAP texts.

How can I find the texts that I need to translate in an SAP system? (Scoping)

In most projects, your approach should be "translate only what you need". Depending on what you need to translate, you may be able to define your scope using only SAP Standard tools. This is especially true when defining the translation scope for SAP GUI developments. Our i18n Translation Manager for SAP® SAP S/4HANA can define an initial translation scope for you.

How much does SAP translation cost?

The cost for SAP Translation in a global rollout can vary quite a bit. If you need a reliable estimate, there is no getting around the fact that you need to perform a proper initial analysis in your SAP system. If you bring in an expert, this is a matter of a few days, and after that, you should have numbers that you can plan with.

How can I translate SAP Smartforms and SAP PDF forms?

SAP has used a number of form technologies over the years, starting with SAPscript forms, then smartforms, and most recently, PDF forms based on Adobe Document Services. Each of these has its quirks when it comes to translation. In many cases, it is enough to use SAP Standard tools, but for large-scale translation or specialized needs, or for translating SO10 texts, tools like i18n Translation Manager for SAP® SAP S/4HANA can help.

How do I best identify and translate the customizing entries I need?

To identify all customizing text tables that were ever created in your organization and manage translation of your customizing entries into other languages, we recommend our i18n Translation Manager for SAP® SAP S/4HANA in most cases. The tool will find out how many texts exist in each table, and how many of those customizing texts were in fact created by your organization.

How can I translate Fiori apps into another language?

The vast majority of custom Fiori apps are hybrids. Most of the data that is displayed sits in an SAP system, which means that a large amount of logic runs in the backend to support what is going on in the frontend. Some texts come from the frontend, and some from the SAP backend. Our i18n Translation Manager for SAP® SAP S/4HANA lets you easily define the translation scope and manage translation of custom Fiori apps into other languages and it even supports Agile methodology.

How do I change the language of an SAP Fiori app?

You can change the language of a Fiori app directly in the URL using the "&sap-language=EN" parameter. Then hit enter to reload the page.

Do I have to use SE63 to translate our SAP texts?

No, transaction SE63 is just one option. Using our tools, you can also push your texts to XTM's web-based translation environment or export the texts for translation.

What is an SAP Language Consultancy Partner?

SAP grants the status of SAP Language Consultancy Partner only to companies that have proven their expertise in helping customers translate texts in their SAP systems. LUDECKE is one of only a handful of companies whose expertise in this area SAP has recognized in this manner. Prior to being approved, each partner is audited by SAP's Globalization Services department, which verifies that the company has both the knowledge and experience required to support SAP's customers in language-related topics.

What is SAP Translation Hub?

SAP Translation Hub offers a way to automate SAP translation. It does have functionality that runs on SAP Cloud Platform, but for most customers' purposes, is probably best used via its API, which you can call from your ABAP system, for example. You can send your UI texts to this API, upon which it will return translation suggestions in the target language you specify. The suggestions can come either from a repository that contains translations done for SAP's products in the past or from SAP's machine translation engine. You can integrate SAP Translation Hub into your translation workflow using tools such as i18n Translation Manager for SAP® SAP S/4HANA.

How can I export texts from an SAP system for translation?

On most newer SAP releases, there is SAP standard functionality to export texts for translation. Third-party tools such as i18n Translation Manager for SAP® SAP S/4HANA have more powerful export options that integrate SAP Translation Hub and also support SAPscript-based texts such as Smartforms, for example. i18n Translation Managerin particular also lets you push your texts to a web-based environment for translation. There are also tools specialized in exporting SAP master data texts for translation from productive systems.

How does translation work on SAP S/4HANA?

If you are planning to roll out your new SAP S/4HANA implementation beyond your borders, or if your first rollout is already on the roadmap, you will need to translate your custom transactions and apps. It’s important to know the differences between the various editions of SAP S/4HANA when it comes to translation, most importantly if you are using SAP Fiori and want to translate both Fiori apps and SAP backend texts.

Typical Use Cases


1 New SAP Implementation

You are implementing SAP S/4HANA, but your organization has locations in several other countries, so you know translation will be needed, even if it will only be for master data, output forms and some customizing. You want to know how translation works in the SAP system, or with SAP Fiori, and what your options are when it comes to tools and processes. We can get you started with a workshop that lets you learn about the dos and don’ts of SAP translation.

2 Ongoing Global Roll-out

You are in the middle of a global rollout, and you are using English as a master language. So far, in all of the locations that are live, your users were able to work and be productive with English-language user interfaces. But the next country on your roadmap is in Asia, South America or Eastern Europe, or another location where going English-only is not an option. We can help you define the exact scope you need and execute your Fiori and/or ABAP translation project.

3 Overhaul of Existing Translation Processes to Support SAP S/4HANA and SAP Fiori

You have been translating SAP texts from your SAP ECC systems for a number of years. But now you are migrating to SAP S/4HANA and are planning to use SAP Fiori as a Frontend – but your current translation toolchain does not support SAP Fiori apps. We can help you adapt your translation process to SAP S/4 HANA, using i18n Translation Manager for SAP® SAP S/4HANA.

4 Roll-In and Data Harmonization

A significant number of SAP installations are in use in several countries, across your entire group. So far, translation has been handled by the local organizations, on an as-needed basis. Now you are in the process of reducing the number of systems, and as part of the roll-in, you are planning to harmonize data, terminology and translations across the group. You also want to reduce costs for managing, executing and fixing translations. We can help unify your translation process and manage the implementation of that process.

5 Migration to SAP S/4HANA

You are migrating from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA, and even though you will use more SAP Standard functionality, you are planning to reuse some of your old developments, as well as implement new ones. You are planning to use a mix of SAP GUI transactions and SAP Fiori apps. Since your in-house developments were translated into several languages, you want to re-use these translations and not start from scratch. We can show you how to reuse your existing translations with minimal effort and translate any new developments.

6 Process Optimization for Translating Add-ons

You develop SAP add-ons and sell them to companies running SAP, either directly or through the SAP Store. You have translated some of your ABAP developments or SAP Fiori apps – either your developers or consultants have done the translations themselves, where possible, or you were working with freelance translators. But there is no unified translation process, and translation is done ad-hoc. Now, a big customer of yours requests you to provide one of your add-ons in a language that you do not yet cover, and you want to use that opportunity to unify, optimize, and where possible, automate the translation process for all of your add-ons. We can help you optimize your translation process to reduce internal costs, unify terminology and implement new automation features.

Planning and Implementation

Estimating Translation Costs

If you are planning a global SAP rollout, it's very likely that translation is on your to-do list. But since translation is not part of most SAP projects, it can be daunting to come up with a good cost estimate. The scope of your translation effort, the number of languages you need, as well as the complexity of your implementation, and the amount of customization you have done are all important factors to consider when budgeting for SAP translation projects.

Scoping

In every SAP translation project, the goal is to always translate what you need, but not more than that. There are various methods to identify the exact texts you need, but they all involve analyzing which parts of the custom functionality added by your organization will end up being used at the locations that you are rolling out to. SAP's standard translation tools offer quite a bit of functionality for scoping, but third-party tools can help complement them. After the scoping process is complete, you will have compiled a list of objects you are going to translate. We are currently working on a series of articles covering the scoping process, the first of which deals with defining the translation scope for SAP GUI user interfaces.

Roles and Personnel

SAP translation is an undertaking that involves business users, development teams, and SAP Basis in equal measure. To make the project successful, it also takes at least a part-time project manager who is directly responsible for the project, who can be internal or external. If you work with an external project manager, it's a good idea to also have an internal counterpart for him or her to report to. To perform the scoping, it makes sense to either have deep in-house knowledge of SAP's language architecture and the various strategies and tools, or to bring in a consultant who does.

Selecting the Right Tools

Tools for SAP translation generally fall into one of two categories: tools for editing translations manually, and tools for enabling, managing, and automating translation. SAP has solid offerings in both categories, in fact, it provides a complete translation environment out of the box. Our tools do not offer an editing environment, since using SE63 or exporting texts from the SAP system are both good options, depending on the project. But when it comes to scoping, enabling, preparing, and automating your project, our i18n Translation Manager for SAP® SAP S/4HANA can be a life-saver.

Choosing a Translation Editor

The three most commonly used editing environments for translating SAP texts are probably transaction SE63, translation industry tools, and Microsoft Excel. Transaction SE63 is fairly widely known, but not necessarily widely loved. It is very complicated to use, but very powerful. Using our tools, you can also push your SAP texts to XTM Cloud or export them to the XLIFF format, which most translation industry tools support.

Maximizing Automation

If you are starting an SAP translation project as part of an SAP rollout to a location abroad, you will want to make sure that you keep translation costs in check for all languages. There are two main ways to keep costs down: scoping and automation. One of the tools you can use to automate SAP translation is SAP Translation Hub, but there are also other options such as i18n Translation Manager for SAP® SAP S/4HANA, that integrate SAP Translation Hub from the ABAP side, for example.

Using the Proposal Pool for Translation and Automation

SAP has translated its software into many languages and has done so for more than 40 years. They built their own translation memory system that is uniquely adapted to user interface translation, and to SAP translation in particular. Although fairly unknown in the wider translation industry, the Proposal Pool, which is now more than 20 years old, is one of the best of its kind. But it is much more than just a handy tool to speed up a translator's daily work. You can use the Proposal Pool to automate your SAP translation project, handle duplicate texts, and implement system-wide terminology changes.

Investing in Terminology

Between your own corporate terminology, the terminology used in your industry, and SAP Standard terminology, there is a large number of terms that it is important to get right in order to produce good translations. A minimum of terminology work should always be done if you want your project to be successful after all, every term you clarify before project start spares you one or more bugs that won't have to be filed during testing.

Streamlining Language Testing

For many years, correcting translation issues identified by testers has been a complicated and slow process that used up a significant part of the translation budget. One of the biggest problems has always been that when you identify an incorrect text on the user interface, it can be difficult to look up that text in the backend, so you can correct it. With SAP's 1Q language feature, you can bring down the cost per ticket and implement a streamlined language testing workflow.

Account for Technical Challenges

Since every SAP implementation is different, you will encounter different challenges depending on your landscape and implementation approach. If you are running more than one development system, for example, you may have to have to deal with translating in multiple SAP systems. Other challenges may be language-specific, depending on which SAP language codes you decide to support.