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Adding a Language

A language is a record naming it and pointing at its translation file.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Internationalisation:

  • Languages — the languages and their files

Setting one up

  1. Add the language with its name and file.
  2. Translate the strings.
  3. Check the interface in that language.
  4. Translate your own labels, templates and dropdown values.
  5. Check again with somebody who speaks it.

Step four is where the work is, and step five is where the errors are found.

Use a speaker, not a tool

Machine translation is a reasonable starting draft and a poor finished product for an interface. Software language is full of terms with specific conventional translations, and a literal rendering reads as obviously machine-produced — which undermines trust in the service.

Somebody who speaks the language should review everything before it is offered.

Context matters more than words

"Open" is a verb on a button and an adjective on a status. A translator working from a list of strings without context will get some wrong, and the errors are frequently invisible to a monolingual reviewer.

Give the translator the interface, not a spreadsheet, if you possibly can.

Do not launch partial

An interface half in each language is worse than one language done properly — it reads as broken rather than as multilingual, and users lose confidence in the parts that are translated.

Finish before offering it.

Check the layout

In the language, on a real screen. Longer strings break tight layouts, and the failure is visual rather than functional so nothing will report it.

Do not forget the edges

Error messages, validation text, empty states, confirmation dialogs, e-mail subjects, document headings. These are the strings nobody thinks to translate and exactly the ones a user meets at a moment of difficulty.

Test with a real user

Somebody who speaks the language and does not know the application. They will find the awkward phrasing and the untranslated corner in ten minutes, and a monolingual team will not find either.

Worked example

An organisation adds Welsh, drafts with a tool, then has a Welsh-speaking colleague review everything in context rather than as a list. That review changed about a fifth of the strings, mostly where a word had been translated in the wrong sense. Layout checking found three truncations, and it was not offered to the public until all of it was complete.

Recommendations

  • Have a speaker review it before offering it.
  • Translate in context, not from a list.
  • Never launch partially translated.
  • Test with a real speaker who does not know the system.