SAP LANGU CHOICE - Guide

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GUIDELINE 4.9

Choosing the Language

ABAP_BACKGROUND
ABAP Code Snippet
The natural language that has established itself worldwide for computer programming is English. This is because the language elements in all significant programming languages have been taken from English and their syntax based on English grammar. ABAP is no exception. In fact, efforts have been made to guarantee correct English by giving additions of related statements different names, even if they have the same meaning. Well-known examples include the (now obsolete) additions VARYING and VARY of the statements DO and WHILE. Here, ABAP can even be viewed as a subset of the English language.
ABAP Code Snippet

ABAP_RULE
Write program comments in English
Write all comments in ABAP programs in English only, so that as many readers as possible can understand them and benefit from them.

ABAP_DETAILS
English comments are a basic prerequisite for distributed development at an international level. There are other good reasons for using English as the comment language:

If names are in English, the statements of an ABAP program can be considered (with a little good will) to be English sentences. For the reader, English comments are best suited for the source code. If comments in another language were used, this would result in a continuous switching between the languages, which would be exhausting even for readers who can speak the languages used.

Frequently, the unwanted retelling comments are very similar to the described ABAP statements if they are written in English. This way, the author quickly realizes that his comment is superfluous.

Exception
Technical terms that originate from country-specific legislation (such as 'Abgeltungssteuer' in German) or specific abbreviations (such as DÜVO) cannot be translated meaningfully or would no longer be recognizable after translation. Such terms should be placed in quotation marks and not be translated into English. In this case you must take into account that country-specific characters can be replaced with 7-bit ASCII characters. The goal of the above rule is to enable as many users a possible to follow the program flow. This is still possible if non-IT terms are worded in another language.

Note
This rule applies regardless of the original language chosen.

Bad example
The following source code shows a typical example of German comments, mixed with English terms, which usually do not even follow the required notation or terminology. 'Horizontales Splittercontrol im Hilfecontainer
CREATE OBJECT splitter_h
EXPORTING
parent = help_container
rows = 1
columns = 2. 'Vertikales Splittercontrol im linken Container
CREATE OBJECT splitter_v
EXPORTING
parent = container_left
rows = 2
columns = 1.

Good example
The following source code shows the above source code with English comments, as set out in the above rule. 'Horizontal splitter control in help container
CREATE OBJECT splitter_h
EXPORTING
parent = help_container
rows = 1
columns = 2. 'Vertical splitter control in left container
CREATE OBJECT splitter_v
EXPORTING
parent = container_left
rows = 2
columns = 1.
The goal of this example is to show the difference between German and English comments. If more meaningful names had been chosen, that is, splitter_horizontal instead of splitter_h, and so on, you could dispense with comments altogether, thus complying with the following rule.