Multiple languages in global placeholders/datafield entries

Clause9 Q&A
1

Hello everyone,

I have run across the following issue. Whilst I understand that this might just not be possible with Clause9, I still appreciate any input on the topic.

I have a bilingual Power-of-Attorney document (“PoA”) which uses repeating-list datafields to add information about the principal party, such as name, legal entity type or company seat. I am using repeating-lists in order to create multiple PoA’s at once, one for each contracting party. The PoA is set to “Repeat:” in Binder settings per #party^names (also a repeating-list datafield).

For the Q&A, I have created global placeholders as predefine answers. For example, for the repeating-list datafield “legal entity types”, I have:

  1. limited partnership
  2. limited liability company
  3. entrepreneurial company with limited liability
  4. [English free text entry]

This works very well for creating the english PoA, but I am struggling with a bilingual version. For the list above, the german terms are as follows:
1a. GmbH & Co. KG
2a. GmbH
3a. UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
4a. [German free text entry]

If I copy my english clauses, translate any static text and leave the concepts with datafields, then the english terms just appear in the german version (via datafields), which is not what I want.

Whenever a term is selected for one language, the corresponding term should appear in the other language - so 2) “limited liability company” in english should always display 2a) “GmbH” in german.

I have looked at Q&A settings and the global placeholders, where I tried setting multilingual labels:

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However, I suspect these labels only affect the description shown to the user, not the data filled into the datafield. Is that right?

If so, is there a way to achieve what I am trying to do? Are (repeating-list) datafield entries only intended to be language-neutral, or is there a way to have selection (1) in Language A autofill (1a) in Language B?

I suspect it might be possible to achieve this with concept labels: creating a #legal-entity-type concept and giving it bilingual labels, then working with change sets in the Q&A. However, if I want to create 3, 5 or n PoAs, each party could have a different legal entity type. From my understanding, having a concept with different labels would set the same label for all repetitions of the document. This is one of the reasons I moved away from using concepts and opted to use repeating-list datafields instead, so that I could have repeated clauses/documents with varying information.

I have two potential workarounds/solutions I am considering that could allow me to keep using repeating-list datafields:

  • Option 1: Work with global snippets to create in-clause translation logic for the german clauses (so if #party^legal-entities-type is “1)”, display “1a)”; etc.).

  • Option 2: Add a special character into the global placeholder, then use special functions to only pull the datafield entry up-to or from that special character for the english and german versions, respectively. So if the datafield would be filled with “[english] | [german]”, I would try to create a function that pulls only “[english]” in the english clause, and “[german]” in the german one. This could allow users to include new terms in a single Q&A field, using the separator to split by language.

I see potential issues with both options I am considering. Is there a setting that I have overlooked?

Thanks for any input!

Best
Kai

2

Could this be a potential use for a Global Placeholder Table?

I have not fully understood yet how to get table global placeholders working, but if it is possible to pull data from a certain column (1a) if the entry of column (1) is selected, this could also be something to try.

Thanks!

3

Hi Kai,

You were very close!

Here’s how you should do it:

  1. In the Global Placeholders, create a placeholder of List of Elements of type text.

  2. The trick is that you should not click on the little globe (world) icon on the right side, because that only creates multilingual labels (i.e., what is shown on the screen in the questions). Instead, you should also create multilingual values (i.e., what will be stored in the datafield, and thus ends up in the document text itself).

In the following screenshot, you see me do this with French and English.

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  1. Next, in the Q&A, select “+ Placeholder” and select your placeholder using the little plus-icon at the very right (or directly type in your placeholder, surrounded by curly braces).

Make sure to select “Different answer per language”, otherwise it will store one single (non-translated) value in your answer.

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  1. Done!

Please try it and let me know whether it works, also for a multilingual export in two columns.

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4

Dear Maarten,

thanks for the reply! Will try this out.

Best
Kai

5

Dear Maarten,

this works beautifully, thanks!

Best
Kai