Translating the ISPF messages text

All FM/IMS ISPF messages are provided in English.

They are also provided in Japanese if you have installed the FM/IMS Japanese component, and in Korean if you have installed the FM/IMS Korean component. You can translate some or all of these messages into another language.

All FM/IMS ISPF messages are stored in FMN.SFMNMENU. You translate a message as follows:

  1. Find the members in FMN.SFMNMENU that contain the messages you want to translate. The message members specific to FM/IMS are all named FMNIzzzz.
  2. Create a library with the same characteristics as FMN.SFMNMENU, with the name FMN.SFMNMyyy, where yyy is the same language code you specified when you modified FMN1MENU. If you have already created a library with this name for translated File Manager base function messages, use that library. Copy the required message members from FMN.SFMNMENU to this library.
  3. Change the required message texts in these members in your library.

To use the messages you have translated, see Using the translated messages and panels. For more information about defining and using ISPF messages, see z/OS ISPF Dialog Developer's Guide.

Note: Be sure to include ALL the messages in the message members you copy to your own library. When FM/IMS needs to display an ISPF message, it uses ISPF services to do this. Therefore the search for a message is made according to ISPF rules. Thus, if ISPF finds the message member it requires in your library, but the message number required is not in that member, ISPF will not look in any other library for the message, but will give an error. However, if you omit a complete message member from your library, then ISPF will use the English message member from the next library in the ISPMLIB concatenation. For more information about defining and using ISPF messages, see z/OS ISPF Dialog Developer's Guide.