Translation context has always been a concern when sending off web content for translation, and many have struggled to find a good way to provide it to with their translation jobs. Attempts to solve this include written instructions that describe the context of the text, links to example pages, screenshots of web pages emailed separately etc.

To illustrate this, have a look at the screenshot below. This is an example of what a translator might see opening a translation job.

A straight list of text segments devoid of any sort of context. If you think back to the context of the web page, it lacks any visual cues that could inform the translation. There’s no indication if or how the text fits and flows in relation to the page layout.

Why is this a problem? Well, if translators are working blindly the translations will not be as accurate as they could be. The translation will have to go back and forth a few times between translators and reviewers for adjustments, and as a result translation quality will go down, translation costs will go up and your time to market increases.

We at SDL Professional Services have taken it upon ourselves to come up with a simple way to send a webpage snapshot together with the translation job, providing this missing context.

The result is “Tridion Translation Preview”, an SDL Tridion Sites module that will automatically send along pages relevant to the translation job.

The module enables Tridion Sites to send along content from the staging website for each component in the translation job (at least, where possible). The translation management system is similarly extended to be able to show a preview page for the selected translation component.

Using Tridion Translation Preview, the translator view now looks something like this instead:

The current translation segment is highlighted in the preview page. It will even update the preview page as you type the translation! The translator will also get the option to compare the translation source and the translation target webpage.

For a short demo video, please have a look here.

The module is available for Tridion Sites 9.0+, and we currently support both SDL WorldServer and SDL Studio. Support for TMS/ManTra/LanguageCloud is planned and I expect it to be available in the near future.

I’ll detail the architecture and technical approach in a follow-up post.