3 Min ReadIntroduction
It may be surprising, but translating content for websites, apps, omnichannel, social platforms and printed marketing collateral is fundamentally a technology issue—meaning, you need to leverage the right translation solution for your needs.
Solutions that use smart automation and technologies can smoothly manage your localized content by:
- Exporting translatable content from CMS/ backend systems to your linguists or translation vendors
- Managing and automating the translation workflow
- Receiving the translated content from your translators
- Storing it in your backend system
- Populating/updating your localized website and marketing materials
To choose the best translation approach for your organization, you’ll want to consider four common technologies:
- A language translation API
- A CMS translation connector
- A proxy translation solution
- A hybrid approach
Let’s take a closer look at the language translation APIs for website localization.
APIs
Many translation services for websites use an API web service that enables your organization to provide content (often in English) that can be programmatically queued and accessed for translation, by virtually any application or platform.
This technology allows you to use a simple RESTful API to submit content for translation and retrieve content from the vendor’s translation memory. You can use these translations to publish and maintain a localized version of your website.
Additionally, through the same endpoint, optimized URLs can be retrieved, and URLs for translatable images may be queued and retrieved for automatic website translation.
APIs also provide a reliable pipeline between a company’s CIM/PIM and a translation database. Through the language translation API technology, your teams can conveniently submit non-website content—such as email text or product documentation—for translation. Once translated, the content is transmitted back to you via the API.
APIs often require IT customer-side resources to implement and maintain.
Common advantages of language translation APIs include:
Security
APIs require an authorization token to be present in every request. This ensures the requesting client is authorized to use the API.
Control
APIs from great vendors implement a call-back notification system that automatically notifies customers once their translated content is completed.
Cost Savings
Most language translation APIs enable you to access your previously translated website content any time you wish—and use it in any content you wish. Great vendors provide this unlimited translation re-use at no additional cost.
Flexibility
An API can connect your translation vendor with all your content, not just what’s in your CMS. You can create a translation workflow for any kind of content, including third-party content, web applications and graphics. Other applications include:
- PIMs for product feeds in other markets
- Social media
- Customer support content
- Offline documents for local sales teams and customers
- Printed and digital assets for brick-and-mortar stores
- Localized advertisements
- Email newsletters or promotions
Compatibility
Language translation APIs are compatible with a range of formats from plain text to HTML, XML and JSON.
Scalability
Translated content can be easily repurposed for any channel via the API, saving you on translation time and costs.
- An HTTP POST is made with the origin-language content in HTML, XML, JSON or plain text within the file of the request.
- The translation vendor responds by adding the appropriate content of the POST to its translation queue for translation and sends back headers indicating the status of the request, including how many words have been queued, translated and other characteristics.
- The file of the response contains the submitted content in the exact format in which it was sent, but with any previously translated content in place of the origin-language content. Previously translated content is accessed from translation memory.
- Subsequent requests containing the same segments, once they have been translated, will yield the translated content in the vendor’s response.
Read more about website translation in our ultimate guide to website translation.
