Template Language Choices Overview

HotDocs Author is fully Unicode compliant, meaning you can make templates in any language, regardless of whether that language uses Latin script or another writing system. You can select a default language for your templates, change the language for a template or a section of a template, or instruct HotDocs to assemble a template in a specific language. You can also display an interview in selected languages.

Overview

With HotDocs you have the flexibility to create templates in any language. While you can choose a default language for new templates, you can also create templates in other languages. For instance, if you usually create templates in French but want to create one in German, you can instruct HotDocs to change the formatting language. This adjusts the formatting to meet German format expectations instead of French.

By changing the formatting language of the template, HotDocs will format any Number and Date variables gathered in the interview (or supplied by system functions, such as TODAY) to your selected language. For example, the order in which days and months are displayed in a date adjusts to match the language you have selected.

To change the formatting language, you can:

apply the language format to your template by setting the Assembly Formatting Language template property.
apply the language format to a section of your template by changing the formatting language. This adds a field containing the LANGUAGE instruction to your template; this language's format then applies from that point on in your template (until you change the formatting language again). Doing this overrides the Assembly Formatting Language template property.

You can change the formatting language using the LANGUAGE instruction at any point in a template. For example, in a placeholder field you add to a text literal within a script.

The LANGUAGE instruction only works within a HotDocs field.

The LANGUAGE instruction only affects the formats that govern Number and Data variable types. Other variable types, such as Text formats, do not require language-specific formats since they are based on rules such as capitalization that apply more evenly across languages. You can choose to use the default formats for the other types of variables or create your own. For example, if you want to use a Spanish True/False variable format, type Sí/No in the variable's Default Format property or the Format property on the placeholder field for that variable.

The HotDocs Author interface and documentation are available only in English.

Common Tasks

Among others, the following common tasks are related to this topic:

Establish the default language for new templates
Determine the language you want your HotDocs to assemble your template in (this is most often the language in which you author your template)
Determine the language you want your interview to appear in
Change the formatting language
Create your own formats

Workflow

When creating a template in another or multiple languages, you should first decide which language you want to use for naming your components. It is best practice not to mix and match languages, particularly if you do not know who else may need to make edits to your template later. When making this decision you should consider:

The language your team members are most comfortable with.
Whether you need to integrate with any third-party systems – if so, you should use the language these systems use, keeping in mind that variable names constitute the identities by which you look up answers in an answer file.

Supported Languages

The languages that HotDocs supports appear in the drop-down list when you change the formatting language. If your language is not on the list, you can use Advanced HotDocs Field Editor Tool to add a Language Culture Name for any Microsoft supported languages instead. The difference between those that Microsoft supports and those that HotDocs supports has to do with number and date formats. Microsoft only supports basic number and date formats that use digits and separators (there is no support for ordinals, spelled out days, months, and years, etc.). For those languages HotDocs supports, HotDocs provides both the basic formatting and ordinals, etc., enabling you to create your own formats for those languages that appear in the drop-down list.

When choosing a language from the drop-down list, you may need to adapt the list of formats that appear in the My Formats property and format Date and Number variables so they are specific to your target language. For example, the ordinal date format dth day of Mmmm, yyyy works in English to produce (for example) a date of 15th day of February, 2018. If you change the formatting language to Spanish and then choose this same format for a Date variable field, this date appears as 15° day of Febrero, 2018. To ensure your Spanish ordinal dates appear properly, you would need to create a new format that puts the "day of" language into your target language (Spanish). In this case, if you create and then choose a format like this: 1º día de mmmm, yyyy, the date appears properly as 15° día de febrero, 2018.

Only the Spanish language formats recognize the gender-specific use of the word one (uno, una, and un).

Scope of Operation

Unlike other instructions you use within a template, the LANGUAGE instruction does not require an END statement. Rather, the instruction applies from where you insert the instruction to the end of the current context. This means that if you place a LANGUAGE instruction at the beginning of a template, the formatting associated with the language you specify with the instruction applies until you add a different LANGUAGE instruction. Even though there is no END for the LANGUAGE instruction, you can add another LANGUAGE instruction at any point. If you choose DEFAULT from the drop-down list, you set the language back to the default language you specified for the current scope of operations. You can also set interview and document assembly language preferences in the Template Properties dialog box.

If you do not specify the default language for an auxiliary template, the parent template's language scope extends to the date and number formats HotDocs uses to assemble the auxiliary template. If you do add a different LANGUAGE instruction in the auxiliary template, that instruction only applies to the portion of the assembled document that corresponds to the auxiliary template's content.

Interview Language Settings

You can choose which language you want HotDocs to display the interview in using the Interview Language template property. When you choose the interview language, if HotDocs supports that language, HotDocs will load the appropriate language module to display an interview in that language.

The languages supported in interview are US English, UK English, French, German and Dutch. If you do not choose any language, HotDocs uses US English (en-US) to display the interview.

The interview language modules control:

The language of the text in interview interface elements (button names, menu items, date picker's calendar, etc.)
The formatting of date values entered during the interview (the order the template user can enter day, month, and year and the language the template user can type for month names)
The formatting of number values entered during the interview (appropriate thousands and decimal separators).

If you set the interview language property using a language code for which there is no built-in module, HotDocs still displays an interview; however, the only locale-specific features enacted are the formatting of the thousands and decimal separators and the formatting and the order of day month and year for dates.

To ensure that the language module you want to use is working as expected, you can run a Test interview.

Common Reference Topics

Among others, the following reference topics relate to this conceptual area: