Translating Sitecore with Smartling

Few years ago, I wrote a blog post about Sitecore Language Translator module, which worked using Google / Bing translations API. It was probably one of the first Sitecore modules which allowed automated website translation (even though it could be used only for testing). Since then, I've tried out a lot of translation modules, as website translation is required in at least 90% (just my rough guesstimate) of the projects where Sitecore is used.

That's why I was really excited when a friend of mine, who works at New York-based startup called Smartling, has sent me the latest version of their Sitecore Connector which I'll briefly (just showing off the most interesting features) review in this blog post.

Translating Sitecore items using Google Translate

One of the strongest techniques which can be used to increase sales and get more potential customers of the people from other regions is a multilingual website. Multi-language management is a cornerstone of Sitecore CMS, integrated into all aspects of content and site management. It allows you to build a multi-language website with almost the same effort as a single-language. See this amazing case-study about building website in 28 languages.

But what if you want to translate an existing site with a thousands of pages, hundreds of templates and website sections? How to identify possible architecture(like "Shared" fields that actually should be translated) problems, or implementation bugs (hard-coded texts, displaying item name instead of a title and so on). Sure, you can ask content-editors to spend few weeks in order to translate the site, test it, etc. But how about instant website translation using some online service? Translation quality is not as important when you simply need to identify possible problems after translation, so... let's start!

In this example, I'll use Google Translate as a translation provider. I also tried Bing Translator service, it's almost identical, but does not provide easy API like google-api-for-dotnet.