Today many organizations use multilingual content to better engage with their diverse audience, enter new markets and ultimately grow their business. Sitefinity CMS already makes it easy to manage multilingual websites and we are now taking it a step further by simplifying and automating the content translation process when working with a translation agency.
The Sitefinity CMS 8.1 release introduces a translations module that enables you to integrate your website with third-party translation services and to export/import content using the XLIFF file format, which is supported by most translation agencies.
Note that the translations module will be available in the Sitefinity CMS Enterprise Edition. Also, the images in this post are based on wireframes, which may vary from the actual product interface.
Integration with Translation Services
As part of the translations management features Sitefinity CMS offers out-of-the-box integration with translations.com and the Clay Tablet Technologies platform, which supports many translation services such as Lionbridge. Clay Tablet doesn’t do the actual content translation, but it facilitates the translation process and acts as a service broker between the Sitefinity CMS and translations agencies. According to Clay Tablet, you can reduce translation turn-around times by at least 60% by eliminating the manual process and the need to develop custom integrations with different translation providers. Should you need to integrate with other translation services, Sitefinity CMS provides an API that enables web developers to easily build this custom integration.
XLIFF Support
In addition to the automated integration with translation services, Sitefinity CMS offers you the ability to export content in XLIFF files that can be sent for translation and when ready imported back into the CMS. You can also integrate with the FTP server of a translation agency, so that all XLIFF files are sent to the FTP server automatically, and imported back into Sitefinity CMS, when ready.
Translations Management Overview
Sitefinity CMS enables you to easily translate content from one language to another and stay in control of the process with approval workflows, versioning and revision history per language. In addition to doing side-by-side content translations, you can send any website page and dynamic content such as news for translation.
You can see the translation status in the context of your pages and content items.
And you can manage all translation projects from a central place.
You can also preview all returned translations before publishing and decide how to handle any error conflicts that occur when sending translations back and forth.
To recap, the Sitefinity translation management solution simplifies the translation management process by eliminating the parts that are tedious, time-consuming, inefficient and prone to human error.
It would be great to hear what your translation management needs are in the comments below.
Anton Hristov
Anton is the Head of Progress Labs, a technology incubator for brining ideas to life. He is passionate about innovation at the intersection of people and technology. Anton has extensive experience in product strategy, management and marketing. He believes in keeping things simple and moving humanity forward, one step at a time.