An important feature that should always be taken into consideration during control system development and HMI design is the ability to translate HMI text (such as captions, buttons, etc.) into different languages, especially if the control system will be deployed in a different country than where it is designed. Below are step-by-step instructions on how to add foreign language translations to an HMI.
- Open the TIA Portal project. In the Project Tree, navigate to “Languages & resources” and select “Project languages”. Select the language(s) that the HMI text will need to be translated to.
- Navigate to the HMI’s runtime settings in the Project Tree and add the selected languages under “Language & font”
- Export the project texts that need to be translated, add the translations, and re-import the texts into the TIA Portal project by navigating to “Languages & resources” and selecting “Project texts”
There are some additional steps required when adding language translations to HMI screens that have been developed using faceplates, which are not part of the project import/export.
- Navigate to the “Libraries” task card, right click on the faceplate requiring changes, and select “Edit”
Navigate to the “Tasks” task card and select the language to be added to the faceplate. Once this is done, the project texts can be exported and translated and the modified texts can be re-imported. Don’t forget to release and overwrite all instances, so that the faceplate updates can be deployed across the TIA Portal project.
NOTE: By default, TIA Portal keeps all languages in the some font. However, since words take up different sizes in different languages, text that fit within a box in one language might not necessarily fit in another language. To change this default setting, navigate to the Options menu at the top of the TIA Portal window, and then select “Settings” -> “Visualization” and uncheck “Use same font for all languages”.
Additional Contributions
- Julyann Tu – AWC, Inc.
