Strings sometimes contain quite a lot of untranslatable content. URLs, HTML tags, code… For translators, translating these strings really are a pain, because the content is not translatable, but there also shouldn’t be any mistakes while retyping it.

I just released an update that should make translating strings containing untranslatable content more fun. Let’s have a look at how it works.

Let’s consider this string. It contains quite a lot of code.

Open the string’s form. It makes code clickable.

Click on the code and it will be pasted to the translation box. It’s that easy!

Here’s a quick video showing how this feature works

I hope you will find this improvement useful. Thank you for using WebTranslateIt!

WebTranslateIt now supports Babel Flash .xml files.

Babel Flash is a smart library to localize Flash projects. As its creator describes it:

Babel Flash is a free AS3 library whose goal is to make localizing your flash projects easier. It handles loading external font swfs and replace graphics and text on the fly. Setting it up can both be done programmatically or in the IDE, so it’s both programmer and artist friendly.

You can now localise these linguistic files using WebTranslateIt. We now support over 26 different linguistic file formats.

I just released another round of improvements to the translation memory server.

New ranking algorithm

The most important change is the matching algorithm. For the nitty-gritty details, the translation memory was previously using the BM25 algorithm. We now use another algorithm, which is a mix of BM25 with exact phrase matching. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now, and it gives much better results.

I also added the following tweaks:

Aberrations removal

The updated translation memory server removes aberrations. For instance, for a very short source string, you could get very long suggestions:

This is obviously not a good suggestion. The translation memory now reduces the weight to such suggestions and push the suggestion to the bottom of the list.

Pushing 100% matches to the top

The update translation memory server now improves the visibility of 100% Matches strings.

Here’s how a 100% Match was displayed before:

100% Match suggestions are now displayed more prominently and are separated from the other suggestions. You can still view the other suggestions by clicking on the “view xx suggestion” link.

I hope you will find these improvements useful. Thank you for using WebTranslateIt.

Today I am introducing WTIpress. WTIpress is a free Wordpress plugin for WebTranslateIt that makes your blog multilingual in a few clicks.

It syncs with WebTranslateIt.com and lets you translate your blog posts and pages using the WebTranslateIt.com service, and then lets you publish the translated posts.

This is great tool, especially if you already use WebTranslateIt.com to translate your software. All your translation work will be at the same place and you will be able to reuse your terminology and Translation Memory. Besides, WTIpress doesn’t require translators to have access to your blog admin.

Overview

Setup the plugin and make your Wordpress blog multilingual in a few clicks.

Synchronize your posts and pages to translate with WebTranslateIt.com

Translate your posts using WebTranslateIt.com

Your blog’s original version can be found at www.example.com

And its French version at www.example.com/fr

Looking good? Give it a try and report bugs if you find any.

WTIpress is open-source and released under the GPL license. The source code can be found on Github.

Translation Resources is a new feature to fine-tune the content of your Translation Memory.

In the project settings, you’ll find 2 new settings under the “Translation Resources” tab.

Fine-tuneable Project Translation Memory

Your Project Translation Memory is now configurable.

Select the projects you want to re-use, and suggestions from these projects will be displayed as you translate.

Use another Term Base

We sometimes work on several projects having the same terminology: for instance a web app and a mobile app for the same company. And in this case we’d like to be able to reuse the Terminology Database from one project over to another.

You can now select the Term Base you want to use in the TermBase settings.

I hope you will find this new feature useful. Thank you for using WebTranslateIt.

I just released an update to WebTranslateIt’s API, which now accept two API keys for a project:

• the usual private token, which authenticates read and write API endpoints,
• a public token, which only authenticates read API endpoints.

Developers should use the new public token to develop features where the API token will be exposed (when developing a Javascript client for instance). You’ll find the new public token in your project settings.

Finally, WebTranslateIt now supports JSONP for all API endpoints. You will find more information about that in the API documentation.

I just released a large update to WebTranslateIt’s translation suggestion system. What’s new?

Term Base Integration

Translation suggestions now integrate with the Term Base. What’s the Term Base? It’s a glossary of recurrent terms in your project. You can read more about it here.

When a term from your term base is detected, the translation interface will automatically pull its translation for you. Click on a term to copy the term to the textarea.

Adding terms to the term base can be a lot of work, but this integration makes it worth your time, as it really helps with translation consistency.

New translation suggestion algorithm

Prior to this upgrade, we used suggestions from Google Translate (ranked first), suggestions from translations from your own project, and suggestions from the Global Translation Memory (which contains translations coming from Projects which chose to contribute their translations to the system).

The new Translation Memory system use a more elaborate algorithm coupled with a ranking system.

The biggest difference with the previous algorithm is that it ranks suggestions better, and only uses Google Translate suggestions if the suggestions from WebTranslateIt have a bad ranking.

It is also able to pull out up to 20 different suggestions. By default we only display the 3 first translations, but you can see more by clicking on “view more suggestions”.

Feedback

I hope the new translation suggestion system works better for you. If you have feedback to share, don’t hesitate to let me know on the support website. Thank you for using WebTranslateIt!

I just released another improvement to the translation validation feature in Web Translate It.

The new translation validation system now checks whether line breaks in the translation text matches the ones in the source copy.

For instance, if the source copy contains a line break:

And we attempt to save a translation that contains no line break:

The improved translation validation feature now also checks whether spaces in the translation text match the ones in the source copy:

As usual, if you are sure your translation is correct, you can override the translation validation by unticking the “Perform validation checks” button before saving.

I hope you will find this improvement useful. Thank you for using WebTranslateIt.

I just released an improvement to the translation validation feature in Web Translate It.

The translation validation feature checks whether the variables in the target copy are matching the ones in the source copy and prevents the translator from saving a broken string.

While this feature is really useful and prevented translators from saving countless broken strings, many translators were very confused when Web Translate It refused to save translations because the validation check didn’t pass.

The new validation check now displays a more visible and more detailed error message, which indicates exactly what is wrong with the translation.

For instance, when a variable named person_name is missing, Web Translate It complains:

If no variable was in the source copy, but a variable was put in the target copy, the error message is:

I hope you will find this improvement useful. Thank you for using Web Translate It.

I just added translation validations checks to Web Translate It.

When translating software, language files often contain what we call “interpolated variables” among the text to translate. In this segment for instance:

%{person_name} could not be found.

%{person_name} is a variable. The text of the variable shouldn’t be translated and exactly match the source text, or it will break the software being translated. However it often happens that translators translate the variable.

By default, Web Translate It now checks whether the variables are matching and prevents the translator from saving a broken string.

If you are really sure of what you are doing, you can bypass this validation check by unticking the box.

Web Translate It currently recognizes the following variables: {variable}, ruby-style %{variable} or {{variable}}, and C-style variables such as %d or %s.

I hope you will find this improvement useful, translation validations was by far the most requested feature on Web Translate It.

Edit 01/08/2011: I released an improvement to this feature.