Translation Services Integration

Hi all,

In Sitefinity we are starting the work on a Translations module, which will ease the collaboration with external translation agencies. The module will included ability for XLIFF export/import and direct integration with external translation services.

We are ready with version one of the wireframes, and will be happy to know what you think about the proposed solution.  Are there any specific requirements or requests, which you would like us to address?

We look forward to receiving your feedback!

Updated on 1st April, 2015

FEATURE OVERVIEW

Users can enable Translations modules per site and get the ability to:

• Export/import to XLIFF content for translation, or
• Send it to external translation service (out of the box: Lionbridge) Implementers can add more.

TRANSLATION PROCESS (PAGES)

1. User goes to Backend Pages
2. User selects one or multiple Page(s), and clicks on action “Send for translation…”
3. A dialogue opens asking user to specify the language to which to translate the selected page.
4. User can choose to:
   • “Save as Ready for translation” the selection – this will add the items to a waiting list, or
   • “Send for translation now” the selection– this will send/export the translation right away
     • User has to specify translation service: XLIFF Export or other, if available, i.e.: Lionbridge Freeway
5. Once a page is saved as ready or sent for translation, users working with it page in the backend:
   • See a message denoting that it is has been sent/saved as ready
   • See a message on the respective target language version that they are in progress
6. User can see all items Saved as Ready for translation in a dedicated section Translations>Ready

   This section queues items ready for translation so that they are sent together. There:

   • User can filter by Source and Target language
   • User can make a selection and Send it for translation
7. User can see all items Sent for translation in section Translations>Sent. User can search and apply different filters.
8. Each time items are sent/exported for translation, a translation Project is created that contains details on the submission.
9. User can browse a list of Projects, to see an overview of all projects created in Sitefinity.
10. Translations processed by external translation services are updated over time and their status can be seen in Translations>Sent, column “Status”
11. Also in Translations>Sent  user can click on “Import XLIFF file” on top and select to import an XLIFF file with the translated items
12. Once translations are received from the translation service, users can review and Accept or Discard them in section Translations>Translated.
13. Once accepted, translations are imported as new draft versions of the Page.
14. User can see all imported translations in Backend>Pages by applying filter by status “Translated, waiting for review” in the right column. 

Best, 

Kalina
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Hi Kali,

Great, I like this new feature. I suppose it is a new feature for all the SF editions? (except for the SBS)

Maybe another service to consider is http://www.icanlocalize.com?

Question: how will this be integrated with the current localization, e.g. Labels & Messages? If this will be integrated, then it will make translating static text etc. much more easy with XLIFF editors.

Best,
Daniel

For consideration, if you are doing this for all sitefinity data types (pages, news, events, module builder types), can you consider a generic import/export function as well?

 We have just had to migrate from an old site (which had to be re-created, not upgraded for a variety of reasons), and the inability to export and reimport ANYTHING was a huge impost, and we had to write a lot of code to do this in a custom way.

It seems to me that this kind of function will cover a lot of the underlying technology stack to enable this to be a feature. It's not completely the same, so sorry if this is slightly off-topic.

Kalina,

Will there be a provider model for this so that we can plug-in our own translation service?

Also, is this just for pages, or will other content types be included?

Craig

Hi all,

I updated the original post to include a revised version of the wireframes (above).
As to your questions:
@Daniel, at this point the plans are to include the feature in Enterprise edition only. We are considering providing sample for integration to translations.com but we can review  http://www.icanlocalize.com as well.
We have no plans to cover Labels and Messages in this iteration. However, I will log this task for future plans.

@Turnos, export/import is a very popular request and we will consider it for
next releases.

@ Craigm the architecture will allow the easy plug in of other translation services. Most content types will be supported (we used the examples with Pages for illustration only)

Thank you all for the feedback, it is highly appreciated!

Kalina

Hope you will consider to add this to all Sitefinity versions, since translation is something I use on almost all websites I build.

I agree with Daniel...localization is available out of the box everywhere, to lock this just to ENT is a crap deal.  We already have to pay for the translation service, do you really need another feature to sell ent...

 At the very LEAST could all versions get export/import...common