Besides Translation Memory and Glossary, there are a few other tools – and things you should pay attention to as well– which can be helpful as you translate.
History
The History tab in the editor contains information about how the selected string was translated in the past, as well as other workflow-related actions such as review/unreview, proofread/proofread reverted, translation deletion, and all the different translation versions submitted already, along with the various modifications made to the source string.
The history entries that refer to source text modifications are highlighted in grey.
Hovering over the 'i' icon at the top of the list will provide a summary of all unique actions:
Also, if you have the editor preference "Show difference with previous" setting enabled, then the difference between versions will be displayed by default:
In addition to this, you can also identify how the different source and translation versions were submitted to Transifex (e.g., via TM, via file upload, via Editor, etc.).
Tip: You can quickly access the History tab using the Ctrl+3 keyboard shortcut.
Glossary
The Glossary tab shows information about any glossary terms found in the string you have selected. Switch to that tab using the Ctrl+4 keyboard shortcut. See Using the Glossary for more.
Comments and Issues
If you have a question about the meaning of a string or see an error, you can leave a comment and open an issue.
Comments
💡Tip
Only users mentioned in the comment receive a notification about it, comments without any tag will not generate a notification.
Comments found under the comments tab in the editor remain available even after removing the target language from your project’s languages list.
You can submit your comments, discuss the translation with other collaborators, or ask questions about the source string.
Adding a comment
To add a comment:
With a string selected, click the Comments tab or use the Ctrl+5 keyboard shortcut, then hit the Add comment button.
Enter your message into the comment box and hit Add comment.
Replying to comments
To reply to a comment, select "Reply" to the sender or "Reply all" to reply to everyone who submitted at least one comment for the specific string.
📝 Note: Editor's comments highlight only the usernames of users in the translation team and the project's maintainers' list.
Viewing strings with comments
There are a few ways to find strings with comments in the Editor:
To find all the strings with at least one comment, use the Comment filter (More > Comment) followed by
*.
To find a specific comment, use the Comment filter followed by a keyword or phrase in the comment. For example, "Comment: context".
Issues
The Issues field can be used for providing feedback to translators or for translators to ask clarification questions about the strings they're translating. Opening and closing issues are an excellent way to track which questions have been addressed and implemented and which ones haven’t.
💡Tip
Project Maintainers are automatically notified - no need to be mentioned in the issue.
Users mentioned in the issue are also getting notified.
Adding an Issue
With a string selected, click the Comments tab or use the Ctrl+5 keyboard shortcut, then hit the Add Issue button.
Choose a priority and enter your message in the text box.
Hit Add Issue to add the comment as an issue.
Project maintainers will immediately receive in-app and email notifications when an issue is created.
The Categories field is also supported, as can be seen below.
If you want to add the Categories field, please go to your Organization Settings page and Editor Settings -> Manage Categories. The ability to add categories will appear as seen below:
To remove a category, click on the trash can icon as seen below:
To edit a category, click on the pencil icon. Please note that a maximum of 20 categories can be added to your organization.
📝 Note: Only Organization Administrators can add categories to issues.
Viewing strings with issues
Any collaborator of the translation team can view comments and issues: if one translator asks a question about a string, all other translators and reviewers will also see the question and answers. They won’t need to ask the same question again.
Open issues can be accessed directly via the link that is available on the project's overview page:
Issues can also be filtered in the Editor: Label > Issue > Open/Resolved/None.
Mentioning Recipients
If you want to leave a comment for a specific user, you can @mention them. Simply type @ followed by their username.
The recipient will receive in-app and email notifications and can go to the mentioned string(s) by clicking the link from the email.
You can tag project maintainers, language coordinators, reviewers, and translators from the project's team.
Resolving Issues
Once the question that was added as an issue has been answered by you or your teammate, and a translator or reviewer updates their translation according to the information received, the Issue needs to be marked as Resolved. This way, it will not appear as an open issue anymore. You can reopen the issue at any time.
Who can mark the opened issues as resolved?
The person who opened the issue.
The Project Maintainer.
String Instruction and Developer Notes
Sometimes, a developer might include notes about how a string is used within an app, or there are translation instructions. These notes appear between the source string and the translation box.
Developer Notes
Developer Notes are imported within the resource file.
String Instructions
String Instructions can be added by clicking the "Edit Context" button in the Context tab.
If you want to add the same instructions to more than one string at once, then you can do that using the bulk editor actions as described below:
Select the strings you would like to apply the same instructions to
Provide the text in the field shown below and click 'Apply'.
This text will appear under the Source string throughout the translation process. If you have String Instruction and Developer Notes, both will appear between the source string and the translation box:
Tags
Tags let you group a set of strings within a resource in any way you like. For example, you can use tags to specify where certain strings came from or prioritize strings for translation using a tag called "Urgent."
Tags work on a string level, and when you add a tag, it is applied to all languages, even if you have selected a specific language in the Editor.
To tag strings, select one or more strings using the checkbox to the right of each string. Then, type the tag's name in the Edit tags section and click Add.
When adding a tag to multiple strings, you will see a dropdown with suggestions of the existing tags in the current project when you start typing.
Another way to add tags to your strings is via the Edit context button in the editor under the Context tab.
Similarly, if you start typing in the “Tags” area, a dropdown with suggestions for the current project's existing tags will be available.
When using the tag filter in the Editor to search for a specific tag, a list of the existing tags will also be available:
Also, Transifex supports smart tags (locked, notranslate, locked_lang_code). These tags allow you to lock a string or prevent it from being translated into other languages.
More information about these tags can be found here.
⚠️Warning: Only maintainers, team managers, and administrator users can assign tags to source strings.
Find and Replace
If you need to modify the translation of a word or a phrase en masse, you can use the find and replace functionality in the Editor. You can search for the entire word or parts of the words (or a character, for the non-space languages).
First, select the strings containing the word or phrase you want to update. You can easily use the filter "translation_text" to find these strings in Transifex Web Editor. Or you can select all strings in this project if it's a global change.
Then, in the "Find and replace" section of the right panel, type in the word/part of the word you want to replace and, below that, the new word you want to use instead.
Finally, hit Find and Replace.
If searching for a part of the word, click Allow partial matching before clicking Find and Replace.
Bulk copy source strings into the translation string area
There might be cases where some strings shouldn't be translated, and the source version needs to be applied instead. Via Transifex Web Editor, you can select such strings, and bulk copy their source text to the translation string area simultaneously. To do that, you can follow the steps below:
Enter the editor and select the strings for which the source version should be applied.
In the bulk actions area, select how to handle the existing translated strings (if any) by either choosing "Skip copying" (this is enabled by default) or "Replace with source", and hit the button "Copy string". If you choose "Skip copying", the operation will only add the source text to the translation box of untranslated strings. If the option is "Replace with source", a verification popup will appear before this action is applied. If you proceed, the operation will add the source text to the translation area for all the selected strings (translated or not), overwriting any existing translations.
Keyboard shortcuts
The Editor supports several keyboard shortcuts to quickly take action without using your mouse.
To see all the available shortcuts, enter the Editor, click on the Gear icon in the top right corner of the header, and click "Shortcuts".
View source strings in a different language
If you're translating to two similar languages, such as French (France) and French (Canada), you can view the translations of one as the source strings when translating the other. If, for example, you translated your content from English to French (France), you'd be able to see your French (France) translations as the source strings when translating to French (Canada).
From within the Editor, click the Gear icon in the top right.
Select Show source string in X.
In the popup, select the translation language that you want to see as source strings.
Click Set language.
Tools in the translation area
Once you select a string from the string list to translate it, you can use some tools and functionality in the translation area.
Tools in the source string area
The area where the source string is displayed has additional functionality you can access using your mouse. Clicking on an active element in the source string will copy a part of that element to the translation string area.
Control characters
Control characters are special characters that, when added to a text, don't have a visual symbol displayed by default (like when writing the character a, the symbol 'a' is added in the text). Those control characters are:
Newline
Carriage return
Tab
Formfeed
Paragraph break
Line break
When one of these characters is present in the source string, there is a visual representation so you know what control character is there. You also have the option to click on it and copy it to your translation.
Variables and HTML tags
To protect variables and HTML tags that exist in the source string, Transifex replaces them with special placeholders.
When you click on those placeholders in the source string area, they are copied into the translation string area. Alternatively, use the keyboard shortcut Alt+number to copy an HTML placeholder or Ctrl+Alt+number to copy a variable placeholder. See Translating HTML Content for more details on what you can do with placeholders.
Glossary terms
When Transifex identifies that a word in the source string is also in the glossary, an underline is added to that word. When you hover over that word in the source string area, you will see a tooltip with the translation of that term in the target language you have selected. Clicking on that term in the source string area will copy its translation to the translation string area.
Please take a look at Using the Glossary for more details on using the glossary in the Editor.
Tools in the translation string area
Shortcut buttons
Those are the buttons right above the translation. These include:
Copy source string
Copy the source string into the translation box (you'll still need to hit Save). This is useful if you're translating between similar languages, such as English (United States) and English (United Kingdom).
Machine translate
Use machine translation to translate the string. You'll need to set up Machine Translation first.
Revert translation
Reverts any changes that you have made to the translation. If the string was untranslated, then it clears your translation. Otherwise, it reverts to the last saved translation.
Add special character
Insert special characters into the translation box (see below for details).
Special characters dropdown
This dropdown holds most common special characters, so you can easily add them while translating.
First, place your cursor where you want to add the special character. Then:
Click the Special characters button.
In the dropdown, click on the special character you want to add.
💡Tip: Special characters RLM and LRM are used to change the way adjacent characters are grouped with respect to text direction. Check out the Right to Left mark in Wikipedia for more information. NBSP adds a non-breaking space (Unicode U+00A0) to the translation.
Character limits
Depending on what you are translating, you may need to keep a translation within a specific character limit to not break the user interface (for instance, in menus, buttons, and mobile apps where space is constrained).
In Transifex, you can set up character limits to ensure the translation meets this requirement.
Click on the string and go to its Context tab in the editor.
Click on the "Edit Context" button.
Enter the desired limit into the corresponding field.
If you want to add the same character limit to more than one string in the editor, then you can do that through bulk editor actions following the steps below:
Select the strings to which you want to apply the same character limit.
Provide the limit in the field shown below and click 'Apply'.
Once the character limit is set, translators will see two numbers in the bottom left of the translation box: a character limit (10 on the screenshot) and a translation character counter (6 on the screenshot).
If the translation text exceeds the set character limit, the translation character counter area on the right side will be highlighted:
💡Tip: If a string has a character limit and contains placeholders, then those placeholders are not contributing any characters for that character limit.
Character counter
The character counter provides information about the length of the source and translation text. To turn it on, go to the Editor Preferences and toggle “Show character counter”:
If the character limit is not set, the character counter will be displayed as follows: source character counter on the left and translation character counter on the right.
If the character limit is set up, the character counter will be displayed as follows: character limit on the left and translation character counter on the right.
Translate using the raw editor mode
The default mode of Transifex Editor is the rich mode. In this mode, it is easier to work when you are a translator and want to focus on translation and context, hiding and protecting all technical details that usually don't offer any value to the localization process.
Still, there are cases where you want full access to the exact source string, as this is stored in the database. To view the source strings without the placeholders for variables and HTML tags, you must use the Editor settings on the top right corner of the editor page.
The raw mode of the editor is ideal for:
Editing all HTML attributes and values
Editing and adding all characters that you want without the editor applying special compatibility escaping for your file format (JSON, Android XML)
In the raw mode of the editor, we maintain some functionality to help you while translating, but this is optional:
Variables are displayed in italics. You can still click on them in the source string area.
Control and Special characters are also visible and clickable.
Glossary terms can also be used.
For usage details on the above, please take a look at the tools in the translation area section.
Translate using the Transifex dark editor mode
To enable the dark mode in Transifex Web Editor, you need to turn on the corresponding setting under the preferences option:
After that, the editor will immediately be displayed in dark mode as follows:
💡Tip
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