Tableau 6.1 – Localized and Globalized

2011 has been the year of international expansion for Tableau. We opened our new UK office, had our first European Customer Conference and now we are releasing Tableau 6.1 translated into French and German.
Francois Ajenstat

2011 has been the year of international expansion for Tableau. We opened our new UK office, had our first European Customer Conference and now we are releasing Tableau 6.1 translated into French and German.

Localization

The Tableau Desktop products including Professional, Personal, and Reader, are now available in French and German. This includes the software and its supporting documentation.

The Tableau setup program automatically detects if you are running on a French or German operating system and installs Tableau Desktop in that language. Even after installation you can, at any time, change the language of the Tableau user interface without needing to reinstall additional components.

Globalization

When building workbooks for others, you can optionally set a “workbook locale” that specifies the appropriate settings to use when formatting currency and numbers. Tableau 6.1 provides support for an extensive list of locales that can used by your workbooks.

For example, you may be authoring a view that you know will be seen by Spanish users. You can define the workbook locale to Spanish (Spain) and as result the dates and number formats will use the appropriate settings for Spain.

By setting the workbook locale to Automatic, the date and number formats will use the settings of that particular user. For example, if I author a view and set the locale to “Automatic”, when that view is opened by a user using a Dutch operating system will display using dates in Dutch and formats appropriate for the Netherlands.

If that exact same workbook is opened by a user using an Italian operating system than the display will update accordingly. No changes are required to the workbook.

Enhanced Geocoding

Tableau 6.1 provides enhanced geocoding data with additional datasets and translations. These include:

  • Country Names in English, French and German
  • State names in English, French and German
  • City Names >15,000 population, worldwide, in the local country language (for example München not Munich)
  • French, German, Australian, and New Zealand postcodes
  • Canadian post codes (FSA’s, forward sortation areas)
  • U.K. post codes (out codes)