Mixed language support

AVmcclint
Honored Contributor

Our company is expanding our Jamf enrollments to company owned Macs in Japan. I know that for the users, the OS and Jamf products are multilingual and will display according to the system language. Obviously, anything I type into Self Service descriptions will be in English since that's the only language with which I am proficient. Today I was looking at the computer records of some Japanese Macs that recently enrolled and I saw most information was in English, but I saw the following under Software Updates:

macOSセキュリティ対応 13.3.1 (a) 13.3.1 (a)macOSセキュリティ対応 13.3.1 (a) 13.3.1 (a)-13.3.113.3.1 (a)

I don't speak or read Japanese, but from the context and version number I can tell this is for the Rapid Security Response 13.3.1(a) update. But it got me thinking...  How would I run searches or Extensions Attributes on Macs in a foreign language.  For Self Service descriptions, those of you in this situation, do you use a translator to put multilingual translations in the descriptions of every item?  Are there any tips and tricks from JamfNation for supporting devices in other languages?  Or am I overthinking this? 

3 REPLIES 3

sdagley
Esteemed Contributor II

@AVmcclint If you're looking to do searches or have EAs that use results from the device which will vary based on the system language you'll either need to create language specific versions (hopefully the potential number of languages is low) or you'll need a policy that the system use English as the system language.

mm2270
Legendary Contributor III

For things like Self Service descriptions, I've found Google Translate to do a fairly good job. For me though, the only non English language I need to concern myself with is Spanish, so it's not a particularly difficult translation. YMMV with things like Japanese and such, but from what I know, it also does a good job with east asian languages.

As for the EAs, maybe I'm not understanding the question here, but would it be that important to output the results in another language? I'm not sure why having the EAs all in English would be a problem, unless you mean that some of the people accessing your Jamf console are native Japanese speakers and would not understand the English output very well.

Thank you, I will keep it in my mind.

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