Getting Started


To deliver unique experience to your website users and visitors, web agencies often customize their templates and scripts for your CMS (Content Management System). That being said, if you decide to scale your website up to multilingual, it will significantly complicates your localization flow. 

The more custom changes were applied to your CMS, the more complex settings localization would require. Building a custom connector to your website in such a case will help you manage the following issues:


  • understanding content processing overall as well as which content properties are localizable; 

  • deciding which content must be protected or excluded altogether;

  • finding ways to optimize content for the translation tool;

  • defining potential localization issues (e.g. hardcoded strings, generation of content without language filters, etc) that must be fixed by developers before translation.


To ensure that your localization runs smoothly, we offer 'iLangL Cloud'. It is aimed at detecting and resolving integration issues, no matter if customer has a single language, multilingual or multi-portal website. Our calibration services will also help to speed up the content localization. They will allow building an optimal channel that will link customer's website and the translation management system. Our product ensures that no hurdle remains once our customers embark on the localization race.


To start working with our system, you need to go through three stages. We call it calibration.

During calibration we double check if everything is set up properly and runs smoothly, before we kick off the actual localization process. To perform calibration, you need to understand a few key aspects:

  • content structure;
  • how to filter content for translation;
  • how to optimize content for a translation tool;
  • how to veriy the applied settings.


Content calibration process includes next steps:


  1. Connection – establishing connection between iLangl cloud and customer’s CMS.

  2. Configuration – content filtering and processing.

  3. Verification – final check which includes verification of compatibility with a translation tool, import to CMS and end result.

Logical components

Connector  - a set of instructions that helps iLangL Content Provider to integrate with the multilingual system properly. It describes the content data source entities, behaviors and mapping which are required to support content import/export to a particular customer system.
Channel - connector instance that links particular website with iLangL Core. This is a bridge between CMS and Translation environment. Channel can utilize various plugins to work with particular content data source.

Plugin - extension of iLangL Core that can be enabled per channel. It extends Core functionality and allows interaction with a channel. It also allows utilizing content for a connector in a specific way: integration, translation, transformation, validation, etc… At the current moment, we support 6 plugins including memoQ integration.

Client Portal -  client portal is a website that has all the features of the main Cloud but is white labeled for a client and allows managing their own users, roles, web content and connectors/channels. More information can be found here.


Why is Calibration Required?


By default, connector settings cover simple and general setup of Content Management System (e.g. CMS setup, translation of static content types, etc). However, nowadays, customer needs are more sophisticated than that. Websites are usually highly scalable and contain lots of dynamic content that requires localization. Foreseeing and matching the exact customer's configuration without a thorough preliminary check becomes extremely hard in such a case. Let's take Wordpress for instance. At first sight, Wordpress seems to be quite simple. However, the CMS has more than 40,000 additional plugins which makes a connection between Wordpress and TMS significantly harder.

This is where website calibration becomes essential.
The connectors we offer are highly adjustable and manage to cover the bulk of general configuration aspects. We deliver a complete solution for enhanced dynamic system integration. 

iLangl calibration will ensure:


  • accurate content processing: its export, translation and import to customer's CMS;

  • continuous localization is a streamlined and simple process

Channel Connection


First step of automated localization is establishing a connection between iLangl cloud and customer’s CMS. This process is described in details here. Please bear in mind that every CMS is unique and requires specific settings.


Content Configuration


Once iLangL Cloud has access to your CMS, you must clearly define the scope of translation (what should/shouldn't be translated). In order to do this, please create content configuration which includes two steps:


  1. Content type configuration - clarifes which types of content system should handle.

  2. Content filtering - indicates which items inside the content types should be processed and how (processing rules).

Content Type Configuration


Our system transfers all the content from a CMS dividing it by types. Content type is iLangl unique description of entity. Every type is unique and has its own distinctive features. Based on the type, we apply rules for content processing, export and import. 

Our structure of content types is very simple. Please check the image below:



Each item in the list can be translated, which is extremely useful when you are building highly scalable, multi-lingual and CMS Portable websites. To avoid replication, speed up the translation and reduce translation costs, iLangl allows you to choose whether a field should be translated or not.

To start configuration process, you should know which system elements require translation. In some cases, you will need access to the database and site backend to specify all the content items you need.


Here you can find the instruction on how to work with content types.

Content Filtering


In iLangl Cloud, we are using two types of filtering:


  1. Static filtering –  management of translatable fields with binding to the content types

  2. Proactive filtering – tag processing.


If your site doesn't contain any dynamic fields (e.g. Wordpress CMS without advanced plugins), static filtering should suffice for you. However, if Wordpress uses plugins with a lot of properties, which require further processing, you should use a second type of filtering to reach the best localization results.


Static Filtering of Translatable Fields


For every content type you include into localization scope, you can manage fields which will be translated or special rules for handling them. To find out more about translatable fields management, please go here.


If you prefer to filter content using tags processing, you can enable a rule making all the fields of current content type translatable. Once done, you can process fields using tags.


Proactive Filtering


Proactive filtering is more complex and may require deep technical understanding of site building.


When your site is complex enough, proactive filtering is required to ensure that content is translated properly. Some sophisticated CMSs (e.g. Umbraco, etc) require proactive filtering to establish correct connection.


It is performed by applying rules for tag handling.

To start with, please go to 'Configurations'>'Content'>'Content Types'. Click 'Edit' under the 'Actions' column and mark all the translatable fields that require processing. Please use regular expressions to set a rule for including content. 

For example '.+' means allow all properties.



Once done, please move on to replacement rules. In order to set a replacement rule, please switch to 'Text' tab and activate 'Wrap values to tags' option in the drop-down list.



Now, tags are ready for configuration. You can customize the processing flow for each tag that was automatically detected by iLangL Cloud (your website original tags) or manually configured by the text encodingYou can choose which content parts should be translated being split by tags. Apart from that, you can use the preconfigured settings. Just upload the XML document with rules for tag handling to the iLangL Cloud.


Each item may have its own translation rules. You can find the detailed instruction on how to process tags in the dedicated article.

Verification


Verification is the final step that wraps up your calibration process.

All the aforementioned steps should be made on your test environment and then transfered to the production once final verification is done. 

Content Export

Once content configuration is done, you should try out your first content export to verify if the site is ready. In order to do that, please select a language for testing and perform a pseudo-translation using a translation tool. Once done, please go through the exported content in the translation tool and make sure it doesn't include any tech information, tags, special characters,etc. You should only see the actual segmented text for translation. 

If you see any odd data in the exported files, please perform re-configuration. 

If everything looks good, you can move on to the import step.

Content Import

Once export was tested, you can import and publish the translated content to test environment. Pay attention to the report to see if import was successful, and check whether translated content looks good on your site.

If something is wrong, please double check configuration. If the issue in question can't be configured, please fix the bugs on your website and repeat import and publishing.

This step can require a couple of iterations before you make sure that everything looks good.