The Contentful integration lets you synchronize your Contentful content and completed translations between Contentful and Transifex. Use this integration so that your localization team can leverage most of Transifex's services while translating your Contentful space.
Heads up!
Transifex's Contentful integration is available as a paid add-on.
Please contact us to enable Contentful for permanent usage or a 15-day free trial.
Configuring Contentful Space
The Contentful space will need to be configured to support multiple languages and enable localization. By default, your Contentful space only supports one language. You have to configure it to support additional languages.
Enable Locales
Note:
You will need to have Administrator Rights
To enable additional locales, you will need to login into your Contentful space, then:
Open Settings -> Locales and click Add locale
In the Select a locale field, select the required locale from the drop-down menu.
Tip:
Optional: Select a fallback language to be displayed if a translation in the selected locale is not available.
Optional: If you have required fields in your content type, select the Allow empty fields checkbox, or else your editors will be unable to publish content without adding a translation for the required field.
When satisfied, click the Save button. Your locale will be added to your space.
Note:
You can repeat the same process for all target languages you want to translate your content into.
Enable Fields for Locales
Once locales are added to your space, the next step is to enable them for fields.
Note:
The Contentful integration supports only field-level localization.
To enable locales for fields:
Login to your Contentful space and go to the Content model tab.
Go to the required content type and open it. The content type editor is displayed.
Click Settings for each field you will localize.
Under the "Settings" tab, select the Enable localization of this field checkbox under the "Field options" area.
Click Confirm to save changes.
Click Save to apply changes to the content type.
Note:
All content can be transferred in Transifex if the respective entry contains localizable fields. In case all fields of an entry are non-localizable, no resources will be created/updated in Transifex. You will see a log entry with CTF_ prefix in the activity log.
Installing Contentful Integration
Tip:
To connect your Contentful and Transifex accounts, you need to be a Transifex project maintainer or administrator.
Follow the steps described below to connect your Contentful and Transifex accounts:
Navigate to “https://app.transifex.com/“
Log in to your Transifex account. This will take you to the Transifex Dashboard
Go to your project Settings > Integrations > Contentful> Install
You will be redirected to the integration’s authorization page, where:
First, it is necessary to grant permission for the integration to perform modifications in Transifex on your behalf.
Next, it is required to authorize the integration in your Contentful account. To do this, select the Authorize button and log into your Contentful account (if you haven't already done so).
Click on Authorize Transifex Integration.
Click again on the Authorize button. You are now ready to link a space.
Linking a Transifex project with a Contentful Space
Tip:
Clicking on the Link your space button will launch the Contentful Integration wizard to facilitate the setup.
Click on the Link your space button. On the wizard's first step, select the Contentful space to sync with the project.
Note:
In case you have configured multiple environments in your Contentful space, only the master environment is considered when linking with a Transifex project.
Click Next to choose the Contentful content you want to sync with Transifex.
Note:
You need to ensure that the Transifex project's source language matches the default locale of the Contentful Space you are linking with. Please be aware that the default locale in Contentful is 'en-us' (English United States).
The content currently synced between Contentful and Transifex includes Entries and Assets based on the respective Content Types and their linked Field Types. The supported field types are Text, Rich Text, and Reference. The later field type is only available with a Contentful subscription in the Enterprise plan.
In the wizard interface shown, you can view localizable content and search across Entries.
An Entry may or may not contain one or more Assets.
Their number will be listed next to each Entry for information purposes.
Note:
An Asset always has a title and a description apart from the binary content (e.g., a picture, a video, etc.). The Contentful integration only pulls the title and description for translation, not the binary content!
When you identify Contentful content you want to sync with your Transifex project, mark it by checking the box on the left of the Entry title.
Any selections you have made are persistent, so you can keep searching and navigating on the displayed content list without losing your selections.
You can learn more about the functionality of this wizard’s step by checking the respective section to Choose content for translation below.
When you are done selecting your content, click Next to move to the final step of the setup wizard. This is where you will define how the syncing between Transifex and Contentful will happen.
Note:
All Contentful content synced for the first time with Transifex will also sync any existing translations into the newly created resource as long as the option "Fetch initial translations from Contentful" is enabled.
If the option is unchecked, we always ignore translations found on Contentful and never send them to Transifex.
If the option is checked, it works as follows:
Every time content is synced from Contentful to Transifex, the integration checks each resource/language separately and:
If this language for this resource is completely empty (there are zero translations), we take the translated content from Contentful and send it to Transifex.
If, on the other hand, there is even one translation on Transifex for this resource/language, we consider Transifex to be the source of truth, so we ignore the Contentful translations for that resource/language and do not send them to Transifex.
This includes content detected during the integration setup or new content detected on a subsequent sync.
Any syncing actions on content that already has a resource in Transifex will not include translations updated on Contentful.
If there are any translations present in Transifex's resources, Transifex is considered as the source of truth, and any translations in Contentful will be ignored.
A relevant warning should be displayed for the specific task in the activity logs.
When you finish this setup step, click the Save & Sync button to sync content from Contentful to Transifex.
Note:
Some steps described above are also accessible when you want to update the integration settings. For more, check the Synching content from Contentful to Transifex and Editing synchronization settings sections below.
Choosing Content For Translation.
In this subsection, we are expanding on the full functionality provided in the content selection step of the wizard.
In this step, you will see information about Contentful content found in the space you have linked to the specific Transifex project.
For each Entry in the list, you can see some additional information depending on the sync status for that content:
The title of the Entry. If there is no title, “Untitled” is used instead.
Checked if the content is selected to sync between Contentful and Transifex; unchecked otherwise.
Note:
If an Entry contains References and it is selected, the respective References will be selected automatically.
The Content-Type that each Entry is based on
The space environment that the Entry was found in
The number of Assets contained in the respective Entry
The content status in Contentful (draft, published, archived).
If already published content is changed in Contentful, its status will be “draft” in the integration.
A Last Contentful update field holding the date of the last update of the content in Contentful
Note:
If you uncheck a Reference but keep the parent Entry checked, then the Reference will not be synchronized in Transifex, yet its parent will continue to be in sync. If, on the other hand, you uncheck the parent Entry and keep the Reference checked, the Reference will continue to be synchronized in Transifex, whereas its parent will not.
Warning:
If you uncheck an already synced Entry, the associated resource will no longer be synced with the corresponding Entry in Contentful.
Filtering Content
To filter the content displayed in the list, choose the dropdown to select the content type and type in the search box:
Filtering is available for Entries only.
The content list can be filtered by pressing either the Enter key or the Search button.
Search will look in the title and content for Entries.
You can use double quotes around the search terms to make searching more focused.
To clear out a search term, delete it and press the Enter key or Search button (alternatively, you can use the X icon in the search area.)
Items in the list have pagination.
You can change the page size using the dropdown displayed under the content list and navigate through the different pages using the left and right arrows located in the same area under the content list.
Pushing Localized Content Options
Syncing localized content back to Contentful can work automatically per Entry in each target language. The integration offers three possible options for automatically sending localized content back to Contentful:
100% translated or updated (for 100% translated)
100% reviewed or updated (for 100% reviewed)
100% proofread or updated (for 100% proofread)
Depending on the setting selection, this will apply to individual Entries as they are localized in each target language. For example, once an Entry is fully translated into French, the french Entry will be sent to Contentful. If the Chinese translation of the article is not fully translated, it will not be sent to Contentful.
All the sync options are triggered when the language reaches 100%. This means that if, for example, an already reviewed language is edited, the updated reviewed translation will be sent to Contentful automatically.
Translating Content in Transifex
Each Entry that is synced from Contentful to Transifex will create a resource following the Contentful title name.
For example, if you have two blog entries in Contentful titled “What I’ve learned so far” and “Few tips for installing the app”, syncing them to Transifex via the integration, you will get two resources with the same names:
“What I’ve learned so far”
“Few tips for installing the app”
If the Entry has no title, then the resource name is constructed using the prefix CTF_entry_ followed by the Entry ID. The resource slug is always the Entry ID, preceded by the same prefix.
Note:
All fields contained in each entry, as long as they are of type Text, Rich Text, Reference, or Asset, will automatically form the source strings in each Transifex resource.
In case of assets/references, separate resources are created at Transifex.
For example, if we have a parent entry A with one reference entry and one asset
Three resources will be created into Transifex:
One for the parent entry
One for the reference entry
One for asset
In case of Rich Text, these fields will result in separate strings.
Once your content is inside Transifex, you can start translating it or manage the whole localization process as you deem appropriate.
Note:
In case an Entry/Reference is set with flag localized=Off in all of their fields, then when fetching to TX:
In the Logs UI screen, you will see the entry with the CTF_ prefix
In the ‘Manage content’ pop-up screen, you will see the title of the entry/reference (coming from Contentful)
In the TX resources page, the entry/reference won't exist.
Syncing Content from Contentful to Transifex
Syncing content from Contentful to Transifex happens upon saving or updating the integration settings in the integration’s UI (Project Settings → Integrations → Contentful → Manage).
When a syncing process is initiated, you will be able to see that syncing is in progress in the activity log. This process could take some time, depending on the number and size of the files that are syncing.
If you want to add new content for synchronization or remove existing content, you should click on Manage Content in the project integration’s UI to show the Integration Wizard and check all the new content you want to sync. Then click on the Save & Sync button to start a new sync process.
Note - HTML Translation integrations
Keep in mind that the integration works on top of the HTML file format which is quite an unstructured file format. When syncing translations from Contentful to Transifex, please pay attention to differences in structure and order of translations as it might affect the mapping of translations to the proper strings.
For more details, check Translating HTML Content and HTML.
Note - Asset Media
Keep in mind that in case of an Asset (media) - part of either an Entry or Reference - Contentful gives you the option of creating both source and translation texts for this asset.
In that case, only the resource for the source (with the respective translation) will be synchronized with Transifex.
Note - References from Contentful
When pulling references from Contentful, which can be either entries or assets (media), take into account that the maximum depth of nested references (e.g., ref1 -> ref2 -> … ref10) is 10. On a deeper level than that, any other reference will be ignored completely by Transifex without any warning.
Note - Same Title Entries in Contentful
In case two entries in Contentful have the same title (but different content types, and they are localizable), then in the activity logs, you will see two identical entries.
Manual Syncing Content From Transifex to Contentful
There is an option to send localized content to Contentful manually without waiting for a resource to be 100% translated or reviewed (Project Settings → Integrations → Contentful → Manage → (ellipsis) Manual Sync).
By clicking on Manual Sync, a modal will appear requesting the threshold localization percentage that Transifex will check on all your project's resources.
All target languages localized above that threshold will be synced with Contentful using the Sync content options you have set up for the integration. For example, if you had set up Contentful to sync 100% translated resources, the manual process will identify all target languages whose translation percentage is equal to or above the threshold percentage you set on the modal and sync all content back to Contentful.
Note
Syncing less than 100% translated content to Contentful might result in parts of the content being in the original language for that Entry. When that content is fully translated in Transifex and synced back to Contentful, this issue will be eliminated.
Editing Synchronization Settings
As your project evolves, you may end up in situations where you want to change the workflow of pushing localized content back on Contentful.
To edit your options:
Navigate to the Project’s settings -> integrations tab
Click on the Manage link under the Contentful section to load the integration’s UI
Click on the ellipsis and select Edit Settings.
Note
While the interface used for editing is the same as that used during the initial setup, you will only be able to change options on how updates from Transifex are sent back to Contentful.
Activity Log
To check the synchronization results, either from Transifex to Contentful or from Contentful to Transifex, you will need to load the integration’s UI, where all events that happened are logged in chronological order (the most recent ones appear first).
These logs allow you to identify any potential issues with particular Entries that failed to sync or contained Assets with no localizable content. Go to your project settings > integrations tab, and click on the Manage link under the Contentful section to load the integration’s UI.
Uninstalling the Contentful Integration
To uninstall the Contentful integration from your project, you have to follow the steps below:
Go to your project settings > integrations, click on the ellipsis, and select Remove integration.
Click on Remove to confirm the action.
