Multilingual design principles

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Please note that ICA-AtoM is no longer actively supported by Artefactual Systems.
Visit https://www.accesstomemory.org for information about AtoM, the currently supported version.

Design principles

Main Page > User manual > UM-5 Translate content / interface > UM-5.1 Design principles


ICA-AtoM is a multi-lingual application which incorporates the following design principles:

  • Users should be able to switch the user interface to their preferred language.
  • Administrators should be able to remove languages that are not needed in their application; they should be able to easily add back supported languages that were removed.


When installing ICA-AtoM, the administrator specifies the default source language. Any user can switch the language view to display the user interface and database content in any of the other supported languages.


Note that ICA-AtoM makes no attempt to automatically generate "translations" from one language to another. It is up to individual translators to do the translations. ICA-AtoM does not "do" translation, rather it supports the activities of translators by providing a structure in which users can contribute translations of descriptions and link these back to the originals.


Known issues

  • It is assumed that the original description is always written in the default source language of the application and then subsequently translated into other languages.
  • There is currently no way for system administrators to add new languages to ICA-AtoM via normal web-browser interaction. New languages can only be added by programmers working directly with the code. In future releases, administrators will be able to add new languages to those supported by their application and to make their translations of the user interface available to the wider community of ICA-AtoM users.