Transifex helps you manage translations of your apps, websites, documents, and more.
After you sign up for a Transifex account, you'll be asked to create an organization. This organization will be the home for all the projects you'll translate with Transifex and the people involved in the process. As the person who created the organization, you'll be designated one of its Administrators.
š Note: Only one organization per user is allowed. If you would like to create a new organization with the same username, please get in touch with us.
Each Transifex organization is organized around projects and source content. Before diving into how you can create a project or add content for translation, let's discuss what source content and projects are.
Source content refers to the material you are translating, along with its corresponding translations (source and translation files).
For example, let's say you are translating a file named file.po (the source file) from English into French and German.
When you upload file.po to Transifex, the platform automatically creates two new files for you: file_fr.po and file_de.po. These translation files will hold your French and German translations, respectively. Together, the three files form a single resource in Transifex.
Once you understand what source content is, itās easy to understand projects. Projects are simply a folder for your source content. You can create as many projects as you need, and thereās no limit to how much source content can be contained within a single project.
Organizing projects and source content
Projects can be organized in any way you like. Think about projects as directories and source content as files. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
Group related content: It's best to group related content into a single project. For example, one project for your iOS app and another for your website. Each project has specific settings and configuration options, such as translation teams, translation memory, and workflow settings.
Manage target languages: Each project is translated into one or more target languages. If you have content that needs to be translated into entirely separate sets of languages, create separate projects for them. If you keep content within the same project but only want specific files translated into certain languages, you will need to instruct your translators to skip those files for the irrelevant languages.
Assign teams: Each project is assigned to a team of translators and reviewers. If you have two resources that you wish to be translated by two different teams, put them into separate projects.
File association: If you are using files, one file is associated with one resource. If you have thousands of phrases in a database, you can group them in different ways. You can choose to have one large resource or multiple smaller ones:
One large resource makes it easier for translators to work through phrases continuously.
Multiple smaller pieces allow you to group phrases logically and handle instances where the same phrase may require different translations based on context.
Example Structure
Here's an example structure that can help illustrate some of these ideas.
Project: Documentation
Source content
Resource 1: FAQ
Resource 2: About
Resource 3: Introduction
Project: Android app
Source content
Resource 1: UI labels specific to customer X
Resource 2: Translations of city names showing in the app
Resource 3: UI phrases
Project: User-generated content
Source content
Resource 1: Customized menu label
Resource 2: User Comments
Resource 3: Product Reviews
In the example above, you could argue that the "UI labels specific to customer X" resource might be better grouped in a separate project. If you have only 1-2 customers, keeping them in the same project works well. However, if you have 100 customers, a separate project is more efficient. If the number of labels per customer is very small, instead of managing 100 separate pieces of source content with two phrases each, you should consolidate them into one piece of source content with 200 phrases and use tags to distinguish between customers.
Converting File Formats
Please note that Transifex does not change or convert the source file format but keeps the same file format and structure. For example, if you upload a .po file in English, youāll get the .po file in French and German.
The only case when it is possible to get another file format is .xliff (This feature is available on the Growth plan and up). This option uses .xliff as an intermediary file format for translating outside Transifex in another CAT tool. XLIFF file is an XML-based format created to standardize how localizable data are passed between tools during a localization process and is a common format for CAT tool exchange.
In this case, the workflow is:
Upload your source file in your desired file format, e.g., .po.
Download the file for translation as xliff
Translate XLIFF outside of Transifex
Upload the XLIFF file back to Transifex (using the option āUpload XLIFF file").
The translation is now back in Transifex so that you can download the translated file in the original .po file format.
š”Tip
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