A system, method and computer-readable medium is disclosed for providing improved display of a host terminal application interface. A host application translator reads characters stored in a character buffer of a computer host terminal application that is displayed to a user as a table of horizontal rows and vertical columns of characters. The host application translator receives a preference that determines which vertical columns are to be displayed and a second preference that determines the order in which the vertical columns are to be displayed. The host application translator reconfigures the display of the characters by displaying the vertical columns indicated by the first preference in the order indicated by the second preference and displaying a means to display information corresponding to the vertical columns that are not indicated by the first preference, and providing user-selectable controls to expand or collapse this information within a particular row.