pbiplintRules / Naming Conventions
Visible name with no translation
What it checks
Visible tables, columns, measures, and hierarchies, and the levels of visible hierarchies, that a translated culture other than the model's own gives no caption.
Each finding names the object and, in its detail, the cultures it has no caption in, such as no caption in fr-FR. A culture is read when its file under definition/cultures/ has a translations block; the model's own culture, named on the culture: line in model.tmdl, is not read.
Example
model Model
culture: en-US
table Sales
measure Revenue = 1
formatString: #,0
cultureInfo fr-FR
translations
model Model
table Sales
caption: Ventes
model Model
culture: en-US
table Sales
measure Revenue = 1
formatString: #,0
cultureInfo fr-FR
translations
model Model
table Sales
caption: Ventes
measure Revenue
caption: Chiffre d'affaires
Why it matters
A caption is the name a reader sees for an object when a report is shown in that culture's language: Microsoft describes a translated caption as an alternative name that appears "when the report is rendered in a different language" (Power BI support for metadata translation). A model that carries translations for a language is meant to be read in it, so every visible name its culture leaves out is one its readers do not see in their language, beside the ones they do.
How to fix it
Give the object a caption in the culture's translations block. Power BI Desktop has no editor for translations, and Microsoft gives its TMDL view as the route for metadata that lacks a graphical interface, "such as translations" (Common use cases for TMDL view). In TMDL view, type createOrReplace on the first line of an empty tab, paste the whole cultureInfo block from definition/cultures/<culture>.tmdl beneath it, and indent the pasted lines one level, so the block sits under the command. Then give each object with no caption an entry in its place, with a caption: line one level beneath the entry, as the fixed example adds measure Revenue under table Sales: a table's entry goes under the model entry, a column's, measure's, or hierarchy's under its table's entry, and a level's under its hierarchy's entry. Where the block already has the object's entry, as it has a table's once any of the table's objects is captioned, add only the caption: line. Select Apply. Script the whole block: createOrReplace "Creates or replaces the specified semantic model objects and all the descendants" (CreateOrReplace command), so a script of part of it drops the captions it leaves out. Or edit the culture's file while Desktop is closed. For many objects at once, Microsoft's Translations Builder, an optional tool, can fill in captions, machine translations included (Create multiple-language reports with Translations Builder).
When to ignore it
When the culture's names are not meant for readers yet, such as a translation still in progress, or a culture kept for another purpose that happens to carry a translations block. Otherwise a visible object with no caption is one a reader in that language sees untranslated. A key or helper column no reader needs is better hidden than translated, which clears its finding too.
To ignore this rule on one object, add annotation pbiplint.ignore = NAME_WITHOUT_TRANSLATION under the object in its TMDL file. Power BI Desktop keeps the annotation. To turn the rule off for a whole project, set "NAME_WITHOUT_TRANSLATION": "off" under rules in pbiplint.config.json.
Quirks
- A calculation group table is read like any other table, so a visible one with no caption is reported. The source rules do not read calculation group tables.
- An object counts as visible only when it and its table are not hidden, as pbiplint reads visibility elsewhere, so a hidden table, and a measure in one, are not reported. The source rules report both.
- A culture with no
translationsblock is not read, so the culture file Power BI Desktop writes for the model's own language, which holds linguistic metadata only, never produces a finding. Tabular Editor's rules read every culture other than the model's own. - The model's own culture is left out, as Microsoft advises: "You don't need to supply metadata translations for the default language of the semantic model" (Organize project for metadata translation). The community rules this rule follows leave it out too; Tabular Editor 3's built-in translation rules read it, so they report nearly every visible object in a model Desktop saved. With no
culture:line inmodel.tmdl, every culture with atranslationsblock is read. - A caption equal to the object's name counts, as it does in Tabular Editor's rules, so a name that reads the same in both languages still needs its caption line. A caption of only spaces does not count.
- Descriptions and display folders are not read: Microsoft says they need translating only for report authors who work in the Power BI service (Power BI support for metadata translation). The model's name and perspective names are not read either; they are not among the object types Microsoft lists as translatable (Metadata translation).
- While a model file has a parse issue that can take a declaration out of the model, such as a line indented with spaces, or pbiplint could not open a model file or folder at all, the rule reports nothing, because a caption, or the line that hides an object, could be in what pbiplint missed, and pbiplint does not guess what a file it could not read says. The skipped line gives the reason,
a model file could not be fully read, and the file's ownPARSE_ISSUEfinding names it, or a notice does for a file or folder pbiplint could not open.
Related rules
OBJECTS_WITH_NO_DESCRIPTIONreports visible objects with no description, the other text a reader sees about an object; this rule leaves descriptions out.NOT_REACHED_FROM_REPORTlists the columns and measures a report never reaches, which a reader of that report never sees in any language.