Hi,

This feature basicly takes your custom descriptions and names from a database table or other repository you can read and set that for a presentation object (table, columns an so on...)

You can have issues with your language key, verify your query you're using to populate your "Session Variable with Row Wise Inicialization", It must have a filter like that

select MSG_NUM, MSG_TEXT

from S_MSG

where LANG_ID='valueof(NQ_SESSION.WEBLANGUAGE)'

In other words: If you have a table with only language key 'en' for exmaple, only when you connect to OBIEE in 'en' language you'll able to see your custom names/descriptions, if you connect in 'es' language or 'pt-BR' for example you won't see your customizations

I really don't know if you delete where clause from above select it will work properly

Please review that bellow

From Oracle Support....

Steps to externalize strings (Columns/Subject Area Names and Descriptions) in OBIEE 11g (Doc ID 1289344.1)

Steps to externalize strings (Columns/Subject Area Names and Descriptions) in OBIEE 11g

1.

create table S_MSG(MSG_NUM varchar2(50), MSG_TEXT varchar2(50), LANG_ID varchar2(10));

(the table and columns can have any name, this is an example but you need 3 columns)

2.Open the repository in the Administration Tool.

3.Right-click any Presentation layer object, such as a subject area, presentation table, or presentation column, and select either Externalize Display Names then Generate Custom Names, or Externalize Descriptions then Generate Custom Descriptions to externalize strings.

4.Select Tools, then select Utilities.

5.Select Externalize Strings and click Execute.

6.In the Externalize Strings dialog, select a subject area in the left pane.

7.Click Save.

8.In the Save As dialog, select a type of file and an encoding value and click Save.

9.In the Externalized Strings dialog, click Close.

10.Open the string file and examine the columns:

The first column contains the actual repository object names, which have a prefix of their type.

The second column contains the session variables that correspond to the name of each object or description, with a default prefix of CN_ for custom names and CD_ for custom descriptions.

The third column is for the translation of the name of each object (to fill in)

11 .Add a fourth column called Language. such as fr or de.

12.Load the string file into a database table.

13. In Admintool create a connection pool to this table.

14. In Admintool create a new session variable called 'externalize' with the
following sql:

select MSG_NUM, MSG_TEXT

from S_MSG

where LANG_ID='valueof(NQ_SESSION.WEBLANGUAGE)'

Row-wise initialization.

15. Log on to OBIEE with the desired language, like for example Francais , and navigate to the equivalent of New > Analyse
You will see the table and column names translated, and if you hover over any column you will see the translated description.
If you query the session variable - in this example 'CD_Paint_Markets_Market' in Answers you will see the correct translated value, and if you query the backend db with sql plus also:

SQL> select MSG_TEXT from S_MSG where MSG_NUM='CD_Paint_Markets_Market';

MSG_TEXT
--------------------------------------------------
<description text translated to desired language>