One system, three languages: Japanese and Vietnamese staff working on the same data

In many Japanese companies with a base in Vietnam, managers from Japan and Vietnamese staff do the same work but keep separate files. The warehouse records quantities in Vietnamese, accounting writes reports in Vietnamese, and someone translates them into Japanese for head office. Every translation is a manual copy, and every manual copy is a chance for the figures to drift apart.

M&C ERP takes a different approach: one system and one set of data, with the display language set per account.

What changes with the language

Each account is set to Japanese, Vietnamese or English. M&C ERP enables these three languages. ERPNext keeps a language for each user, separate from the default language of the whole site (see the sources at the end). That setting decides most of the words on the screen: screen names, field labels, button names, status names and error messages; a few labels are still untranslated. When a Japanese manager opens an import shipment, the field reads 実入港日（ATA）; when a Vietnamese colleague opens the same shipment, the same field shows its Vietnamese label in the same place.

Nobody has to change anyone else’s language, and there is no second copy of the data.

What does not change

• Document numbers and figures. A sales order has the same number, quantities and amounts whoever opens it, in whatever language.
• Status. When the warehouse confirms a receipt, the shipment’s status changes for everyone at once; only the status name follows the reader’s language.
• Text typed by users. Customer names, remarks, delay reasons and comments are stored exactly as typed. The system does not translate them. It is worth agreeing early which fields are written in which language, so the people on the other side can read them.

Talking on the document itself

Documents have a comment area, for example on the import shipment. When a Vietnamese employee comments on an import shipment, a Japanese manager who opens the same shipment sees it. Questions and answers stay next to the document they are about instead of getting lost in e-mail or chat.

Japanese-style printouts

For papers sent to Japanese business partners, M&C ERP has print formats for 見積書 (quotation), 納品書 (delivery note) and 適格請求書 (qualified invoice under Japan’s invoice system), A4 and in Japanese. The formats on the demo site are samples; the ones you use for real need checking against the rules and your company’s practice.

What to check in the demo

1. If you were given two accounts, one Japanese and one Vietnamese, sign in to each in its own browser (or use a private window for one) and open the same import shipment. Check that the document number is the same and that each account shows the labels in its own language.
2. Write a comment on the shipment in one browser, then reload the page in the other browser to see the comment.
3. Look at the free-text fields (remarks, reasons) and decide which language your company will use in each.
4. Print a 見積書 and a 納品書 and show them to the person in charge on the Japanese side.

If these four steps fit the way your company works, the “two languages, two files” setup can go.