Translate¶
Introduction¶
Transifex is both a translation management tool and a translation editing tool. It allows content owners to store their content and translations, teams to work together, but also translators to translate from inside Transifex itself.
There are a number of ways to translate:
- Translate using the Web-based Editor
- Translate offline using the Download & Upload buttons in Transifex or using the command-line client
Web-based Translation Editor¶
Transifex’s web-based translation editor is codenamed Lotte: “Lightweight Online Translation Editor”. It’s similar to other web editors, but is integrated into Transifex, offering some useful functionality for translators.
To access the editor, you should have permissions to submit translations to a resource (authenticated, member of realated team or project maintainer). Select the resource’s language you want to contribute to (or add it, if it’s not already there) and click “Translate Now!”.
The user interface should be intuitive. We’re documenting some features below which might need some more explanation.
Features¶
Keyboard Shortcuts¶
Transifex’s web editor allows keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts help you save time and make translation process faster.
Currently, “Lotte” (online editor) supports the following shortcuts:
| Shortcut Key | Definition | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Alt-l | Next page | Moves editor to the next translations page. |
| Alt-j | Previous page | Moves editor to the previous translations page. |
| Alt-i | Move up row | Moves focus one row upwards. |
| Alt-k | Move down row | Moves focus one row downwards. |
| Alt-g | Copy source string | Fill in the translation textarea with the content of the source string. (Copy the source string as it is, to the translation area.) |
Filtering and Searching¶
Within Lotte it’s possible to filter the strings appearing on the table by checking some filters available on the top of the editor, like Translated, Untranslated and Reviewed.
It’s also possible to use some keywords on the search box in order to get some more limited results. The keywords available are:
| Keyword | Description |
|---|---|
| file: | Accepts file paths, such as file:templates/. |
| before: | Strings updated before a given date. (i.e.: before:2012-01-01) |
| after: | Strings updated after a given date. (i.e.: after:2011-10-01) |
Besides the keywords you can of course enter normal words, as well as phrases between quotes in the search box. For example, entering "It is amazing" will bring only entries that contain the exact phrase.
Non-standard Features¶
Here’s a list of some of the extra features the Transifex Web Editor offers which might be different than the ones you’re used to in the offline tools.
Translation Suggestions¶
When a translator is unsure about a translation, he can provide a Suggestion in the web editor. Multiple suggestions can be provided, and users can vote on the best suggestion. Then, a privileged translator can choose the best one and use it as an official translation.
This support is similar to Gettext’s fuzzy translations, but much richer, since multiple “fuzzy” values can be provided from users. If you are translating offline, please note that suggestions are not converted to fuzzy entries in the exported PO file, since Gettext only supports one fuzzy translation per source string instead of multiple ones with votes.
Live Translations¶
When working in the web editor, every string you translate is automatically saved in the database, and readily available for use by other translators or the project maintainer. This can help avoid duplicated work, but also improve consistency since your translation can be re-used immediately by other translators, instead of waiting for your next upload.
This setting is enabled by default.
Translation Memory¶
Transifex periodically calculates the possible Translation Memory matches in the background and it shouldn’t take more than 1 hour for the similar entries to be available to you. You will be able to find available TM entries in Lotte under the ‘suggestions’ tab of each translatable string.
Glossary¶
The glossary is a feature that will improve the translators’ workflow and boost quality assurance in L10n projects. Ambiguous terms can have an entry in a project’s glossary with a translation and explanatory comment in every language. Glossary information is available in our online translation editor as tooltips for the highlighted glossary terms. This process guarantees that translations will be consistent across different translators and will always follow the project’s context.
Multiple source languages¶
In Lotte, you can view more than one source language to translate from by choosing extra options from the “More Languages” drop-down. This can be useful in a number of ways:
- Translators who speak more than two languages and would like to have more context for their translation. For example, quite often translators to a language such as Kannada might have both English and Hindi as source languages.
- Languages which are localized or variants of others can use this feature, such as Brazilian Portuguese, Serbian (Latin) etc.
Translation History (Undo feature)¶
With Lotte you can use the ‘history’ tab available for each translation entry to visualize past translations done for a particular string. The translation history is filled with entries periodically, so if a user changes a translation several times in a short period of time, those changes will not be available within the tab content.
Proofreading translations¶
Proofreading is a way for project maintainers to control the quality of their translations. Language teams have translators and another user level called Reviewers who are set by the team coordinator or the project maintainer.
Reviewers have all the privileges of the translator level, and additionally they are are responsible for proofreading the translated strings and marking them as reviewed. The process takes place through the web editor by using the checkboxes visible next to each string’s entry. The reviewing interface is only visible to reviewers and project maintainers while translators can only see which strings have been reviewed so far.
Once a translation has been marked as Reviewed, it may not be notified by a translator, who should just skip those entities in the web editor. He can also use the filters at the top to hide the reviewed strings.
When a translator uploads a file with translations, the reviewed strings will simply be skipped and their translations will not be saved.
In their exported files, maintainers have the option of including only reviewed translations. This is available both from the web interface as well as the command-line client.
Frequently Asked Questions¶
Why can’t I use certain words in my translation in the web editor?¶
Some character sequences are not allowed to be used because they might be breaking the project in a way. For example, when translating software projects, you are not allowed to use %d and %s, since they are reserved.
Additionally, if the source entity uses these keywords, you should use them as well: a translation of an English sentence which contains one of these keywords should also contain the respective keyword, without spaces.
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