Every Translator component contains an entrypoint, the main.lua module.
This module contains the main function.
When you start a component, the Translator runs 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 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.