Tools for localization in Kontent.ai
After you figure out your localization priorities, the types of content you need to localize, and your resources, it's time to decide what tools you're actually going to use. This lesson is here to guide you through the options.
Manual localization
Manual localization can be done directly in Kontent.ai. It’s as straightforward as opening the source and target language content in separate windows and filling in the target content item variant with the localized content. While straightforward, this method isn’t ideal for high-volume or often updated content due to the lack of translation tools like translation memory
or termbase.
However, for seldom updated short texts like legal disclaimers or cookie bars, it may suffice as such content is brief and manageable for your local teams to translate and review the content from scratch when needed.
Machine translation
Another fairly straightforward approach in Kontent.ai is machine translation. There are multiple approaches to it. Let’s take it from the most direct one.AI translations
The easiest way to translate content in Kontent.ai is to use AI translations. Once the source content is ready, copy it to other languages for AI to handle the translation within seconds. The AI translation is ideal for fast, cost-effective translation of long articles with top-notch machine translation quality. It’s perfect for you if you need to translate seldom updated content that’s not structured by components and lives directly within text or rich text elements. While AI does an excellent job when translating, the approach has its caveats:- AI translation isn’t localization. Idioms and local context are not considered; local teams’ reviews may be required.
- There’s no translation memory or termbase, akin to manual translation in Kontent.ai.
- Every source update requires fresh translation, along with all the subsequent reviews and corrections.
- AI cannot translate components or tables in rich text – you need to take care of them separately.
Alternative approach to machine translation
You can integrate a service that provides machine translation via APIs. Kontent.ai sends content to the service, which translates it and returns it to an appropriate local content item variant in Kontent.ai. You can fully automate this process, unlike AI translation. However, the challenges are similar to integrating a translation management system for human translation. And the one downside of machine translation always remains – you get only translation; machines can’t localize (at least for now).Computer-aided human translation
If you need quality localization and have high volumes of frequently updated content, computer-aided translation (CAT) is the way. For that, you need to integrate Kontent.ai with a 3rd-party translation management system (TMS).In its very basics, the integration can work like this:
is the way. For that, you need to integrate Kontent.ai with a 3rd-party translation management system (TMS).In its very basics, the integration can work like this:- The 3rd-party TMS gets source content from Kontent.ai via Delivery API.
- Translators do their job in the TMS’s own interface.
- When they’re done, the TMS uses Kontent.ai’s Management API to push the translated content back into an appropriate local content item variant in Kontent.ai.
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