...
When you start a component, the Translator runs the the main function in main.lua — this only occurs once when the component starts. Every time a running component receives a message, the main function is called.
This affects the way you use variables as they One thing to note is that variables are initialized at different times depending on where they are declared.
Variables declared outside the main function are initialized once when the component is started.
Variables declared within the main function are initialized every time a message is processed by the Translator.
...