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ABAP Keyword Documentation → ABAP Programming Guidelines → Structure and Style → Comments →Choosing the Language
Background
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.
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.
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:
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.
Good example
The following source code shows the above source code with English comments, as set out in the above rule.
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.