Sort order of translated text field is always based on English language key value

The ordering of Service Catalog Categories was not as expected when non-English language was selected for the user's session. The categories were always displayed in the same order (as per English) instead of the order of the translated text.

The customer was using a customized widget that was retrieving a list of parent categories using the following server script:

var sc = new GlideRecord('sc_category');
sc.addQuery('sys_class_name', 'sc_category');
sc.addActiveQuery();
sc.orderBy('title');

The script is trying to order the query results based on the "title" field.

This issue happens when Internationalization Language plugins are active.

To verify behavior I ran the same equivalent query code directly against the instance as background script:

var sc = new GlideRecord('sc_category');
sc.addQuery('sys_class_name', 'sc_category');
sc.addActiveQuery();
sc.orderBy('title');
sc.addQuery('sc_catalog', 'e0d08b13c3330100c8b837659bba8fb4');
sc.addQuery('parent', '');
sc.query();
while (sc.next()) {
  gs.print(sc.title)+"\n";
}

With the English language selected for the session, this was the output:

*** Script: Catalog & Model Management
*** Script: Click & Collect
*** Script: Employee Lifecycle
*** Script: Group & Role Provisioning in IT4You
*** Script: IT Internal Services
*** Script: My Workplace
*** Script: Rentals
*** Script: Services

When German language was selected the script returned:

*** Script: Katalogverwaltung
*** Script: Click & Collect
*** Script: Mitarbeiter Lifecycle
*** Script: Gruppen & Rollenbereitstellung
*** Script: IT interne Services
*** Script: Mein Arbeitsplatz
*** Script: Verleihung
*** Script: Services

This confirms that the title field which is type "Translated Text" is being successfully translated but the ordering is always based on the English title text.

The only way to modify the way that this is operating would be to modify the widget server code that implements your custom widget and populates the data property set with category data. For example, read the translated titles into an array and then implement your own custom sort logic to reorder it based on the translated text value and place it into the data structure in your desired order.

This is not a Service Portal specific issue. It is a general issue related to trying to order the results of GlideRecord query based on the value of a translated text field.