This post is especially interesting for the people whose native language is not English. Do you know the feeling? You are looking at the source code of some .al object and you come across a field name that means absolutely nothing to you. It would be helpful for you if you could see the translation of this field name into your native language. Often this is already sufficient. In the old C/SIDE client we had the field “Caption” in the table designer to see the translation.

AL Navigator: Open/Show Microsoft Translation

To bring the functionality back to you a bit, I added four new commands to my Visual Studio Code Extension AL Navigator:

• Show Microsoft Translation (English -> Target Language)
• Show Microsoft Translation (Target Language -> English)
• Open Microsoft Translation (English -> Target Language)
• Open Microsoft Translation (Target Language -> English)

Since pictures and videos are worth a thousand words, check out my examples below.

Show Microsoft Translation (English -> Target Language)

I am in the table “Sales Header” and would like to display the translation of “Sell-to Customer No.”. To do this, I highlight the field name and execute the command “AL Navigator: Show Microsoft Translation (English -> Target Language). The translation is then displayed with a small information message at the bottom of the screen, in this case in German.

Show Microsoft Translation (Target Language -> English)

If, on the other hand, I know the name in the target language and want to have it translated into English, I execute the command “AL Navigator: Show Microsoft Translation (Target Language -> English)”. In the following example, I translate “Artikelnr.” (Item No.).

Open Microsoft Translation (English -> Target Language)

When you execute the command “AL Navigator: Open Microsoft Translation (English -> Target Language)” a window with the Microsoft translation will be opened in your browser. This allows you to view all translations if there is more than one. In the following example we open the translations of “Document Type”.

Open Microsoft Translation (Target Language -> English)

The same applies again to the translation from your target language into English. In this example we will display the translations of “Artikelnr.” (“Item No.”).

It is not only possible to translate field names with these commands. In principle, you can translate any term that is contained in the Microsoft Dynamics Base app and for which a translation exists in the translation files.

Of course, the target language can be changed by the user. To do this, open your settings in Visual Studio Code (Ctrl + ,).

Navigate to your Extensions and there to the AL Navigator Configuration. Change the setting “AL Navigator: Translation Target Language”.

I hope this helps you. Have fun with it.