Create/Edit Translations

Overview

This screen displays the create/edit form for a translation item.

How to Access

Select Components → KM FasTrans → Translations Management Dashboard (hereinafter TMD) from the drop-down menu on the back-end of your Joomla! installation or click the quick link TMD in the KMFasTrans Control Panel window.

In the row where you want to edit an Item, click the  or the  button in the corresponding language column, or the proper button .

In the row of the source element whose translation or translations you want to edit or create, you have two options:
1. If you want to edit or create a translation to an specific target language, click on the or button in the language column.
2. If you want to edit or create more than one translation, or want to see all translations to the selected target languages, click the button that best suits what you want to do in the Actions in all selected target languages column.

If in doubt you can visit TMD for a detailed explanation.

Description

In the KMFasTrans: Create/Edit an Element Translation  you can create or edit a translation item of any type (Articles, Banners, Categories, Contacts, Fields, Field Groups, Menus, Menu-Items, Modules, News-Feeds and Web-links). The item type is selected in the Translations Management Dashboard screen in the drop-down list - Select Element Type -.

Screenshot

The fields displayed on this screen very similar to those of the standard Joomla! editing screens plus some more buttons. Therefore not all fields will be explained in detail, but those specific to KMFasTrans.

Toolbar

At the top left you can see the toolbar:

Save Item(s).

When hovering the mouse over the button the following info is displayed:

Pressing the Save button will save the items in the languages that have checked the checkbox and will stay in the same window. Pressing Save & Close will have the same effect but will be redirected to the Translation Management Dashboard window.

When saving the items, the modifications of the existing items will be saved and the new items will be created. If there was no translation of the source item, that is, there was no set of translations, saving the item or items will create a new set of translations that will contain all the created elements. If there already existed a set of translations, it will be modified to include all the new created items.

Since all the target items are in memory in the editing form, the most effective way to proceed is to make all the necessary modifications in all languages, changing the language (tab) as many times as necessary, and finally save all the languages at once.

Cancel (if creating a new item) or Close (if editing an existing item).

Returns to the TMD window without saving the work. Cancel will not create a new item and Close will not save any modification.

 Versions.

The standard Joomla! button.

 Copy All.

Copy all the fields, that are not language dependent, from the source item to all the selected target languages. It also copies in empty forms when the target item is being created.

The value of the Alias field is not copied in order to be automatically set based on the title when saving the item in the target language.

In the first image above, the value in the "Category" field on the left side will not be copied over the same field in the right side because the Category in Spanish (español) is different from the Category in English (en-GB). 

The same applies to all language-dependent fields, which not only are not overwritten with the value of the field source of the translation but also the values they contain are only those in the language selected in the tab. In the example shown, the drop-down list of categories only contains items in Spanish.

Moreover, as we will see later, KMFasTrans will pre-fill these fields with the translations of the source item fields. In this example the Category field of the item in Spanish would be pre-filled with the Spanish translation (Joomla! -ES) of the value of the Category field in the source item (Joomla!).

Translate All.

Translates all translatable fields of the source item to all target languages. Like the copy button above it also copies in empty forms when the target item is being created.

A field is translatable when the edit form has the button to the right of the field or at the top of the field.

Hide left Side.

Pressing the button will hide the left side that contains the source element, leaving more space for the target element. The following image shows the window with the left side hidden:

Language tabs

The first line below the toolbar, framed in purple, contains indications of the source language currently selected and which is the reference language. To learn more about the reference language, visit Reference Language.

Below are the language tabs for the source language and for the target languages

As shown, the screen is divided into two parts with the same structure. On the left hand side we have the source item of the translation, and on the right hand side we have the element translated from the source. That is, we are translating from the left side to right side. The language of the source item is indicated in the only tab on the left side (English (en-GB) in the example), and the language of the translated item is the selected tab on the right (Spanish (español) in the example).

Left side (framed in red): there is a tab for the Source Language that you selected in the drop down list "- Select Source Language -" on theTranslations Management Dashboard (hereinafter TMD) window. You can edit the source item by clicking on the source language tab. Doing so will open the Joomla! and pressing the Close button in the Joomla! editing window you will return to this editing window.

Right side (framed in green): there will be as many tabs as content languages you selected in the drop down list "- Select target Languages -" on theTMD window. The active tab will correspond to the language of the element to be edited or created that you chose in the TMD window. If you chose an action for all the selected target languages, then the active tab will be the one that was active for the last time, or if there were none, the first one.

You can change the target item by clicking on any language tab on the right side.

The tabs of the destination languages have a different background color depending on the situation of the item in that language:

- If the item already exists and it is not the active tab, the background is white. This is the case of the African language framed in green.

- If the item does not exist and it is not the active tab, the background is gray. This is the case of the German language framed in blue.

- If it is the active tab, the background is blue. In this case it is known if a new item is being created or an existing item is being edited by the title in the upper part of the window:

If you are editing many languages at the same time, the language tabs can take up a lot of space due to the title of each language. In this case you can use the configuration option 'Hide language titles' from the 'Editing options' tab as you can see in the following images::

When choosing 'Yes' in this option and Save, the tabs of the target languages will show only the language flags as in the following image:

As you can see there is a tip showing the language title.

Any tab of the target languages may show a vertical red rectangle indicating that the item has inconsistencies:

The active tab will show two buttons, one for copy all the fields not language dependnet of the source item into the active target item and another one to translate all translatable fields of the source item into the active target item:

 If you select a tab whose item has inconsistencies, the editing form will show an inconsistencies table similar to the one in this image:

As you can see there is additional information located above the language tabs (framed in green). This table will contain all the inconsistencies of the element being edited. To learn more about dealing with inconsistencies visit Dealing with inconsistencies.

Item tabs

Located below the language tabs are the item tabs: 

Framed in red on the left side are the tabs of the source item.

Framed in green on the right side are the tabs of the target item.

In both items there are the same tabs and in the same order. However, when selecting a tab in the target item, the same tab is automatically selected in the source item in order to be able to compare the information of both items.

The only difference between the two groups of tabs is that the the active tab of the target item can have one or two buttons, as shown in the previous image in the 'Details' tab. Below are some images of these buttons.

Copy buttons

In addition to the copy buttons previously seen, each field that can be copied from the source item to the destination item has a copy button to its right or above it.

When hovering the mouse over this button the following is displayed as you can see in the following image:

If you click on the link 'into this language' the content of the field in the source item will be copied to the same field in the target item.  In our example we would copy theTitle of the left side (Begginers) in the title of the right side, which is the Title of the item we are creating in the German language.

If you click on the link 'to all languages', the content of the field in the source item will be copied to the same field in all the selected target items. In our example we would copy the Title of the left side (Begginers) in the Title of the right side, that is the item that we are creating in German language, and in the Title of all the other items in all the other selected languages (African, English (en-US ), French (FR), Italian(Italy) and Spanish (español)).

Translate buttons

In addition to the translate buttons previously seen, each field that can be translated from the source item to the destination item has a translate button to its right or above it.

When hovering the mouse over this button the following is displayed as you can see in the following image:

The actions are similar to the copy button above.

If you click on the link 'into this language' the content of the field in the source item will be translated into the target language and copied to the same field in the target item.  In our example we would translate the Title of the left side (Begginers) into German language and copy the result (Anfänger) in the title of the right side, which is the Title of the item we are creating in the German language.

If you click on the link 'to all languages', the content of the field in the source item will be translated into all the selected target languages and copied to the same field in all the selected target items. In our example we would translate the Title of the left side (Begginers) into German language and copy the result in the Title of the right side, that is the item that we are creating in German language, and would translate 'Begginers' into the remaining languages and copy each translation in the Title of each other item in the corresponding language (African, English (en-US ), French (FR), Italian(Italy) and Spanish (español)).

The following explains some features of some fields that deserve to be commented:

Saving Item Permissions

When setting permissions on an item, clicking on the "Copy" button of the Permissions tab will copy all the permissions from the source item, and they will be shown in the drop-down list "Select New Setting". However, to see the real value, ie the "Calculated Setting" you need to save the form.

It is possible to copy each action only to the item we are editing, or to all the destination items at one time by clicking the world icon located to the right of the new setting box before clicking the copy button of the tab.

Clicking on this icon will show the icon of the world that indicates all the languages, or the flag of the language in edition. In the example, we would be copying the value of the Delete and Edit actions to all the target items, and the value of the Edit State action only to the item being edited, which is in the German language.

Pre-filling of source item field values

One of the most powerful features of KMFasTrans is the pre-filling of fields when creating new translations. When you are going to create a translation of a source item to a destination language X, KMFasTrans will fill in the form fields of the destination item with the items that are translated into the X language of the fields in the source language.

For example, if the source item is the article 'Art-en' in the English language belonging to the category 'Cat-en' in English, when creating the translation of 'Art-en' into French (or 'Art-fr'), the category field of the 'Art-fr' form will be filled in with the French translation of the 'Cat-en' category.
If KMFasTrans does not find the translation, it will generate an 'Not found' type inconsistency.

When editing an item, the fields are not pre-filled, as it is obvious, but if a field is not appropriate for whatever reason, an inconsistency will also be generated.

All the above is done on all the languages ​​that have been loaded in the editing window, which increases the efficiency of creating translations enormously.

To see this more in detail we are going to review the creation and edition of a Menu Item in its different tabs. In the example below the source language is English and we have loaded in the editing window as target languages the African, French, German, Italian and Spanish languages. Translations into African, French and Italian already exist (tabs with a white background) and translations into German and Spanish will be newly created (tabs with gray and blue background respectively). We begin with the creation of the translation into Spanish.

Let's see the Details tab when creating an item:

 The image is self-explanatory.

And now let's see the same tab when editing an item

Let's see the Layout tab when creating an item:

Now the Associations tab:

 As you can see in the column 'Current value' there is no association because a new element is being created. In the column 'Proposed value' you can see the associations that will be created when saving the data. This tab is really only informative because you do not have to worry about element associations at any time as KMFasTrans takes care of it automatically.

Finally let's see the assignments from menu items to modules. To do this we show an example of creating a new module:

In the Menu Assignment tab the assignment of the module to the different menus takes place. The first thing you notice is that this tab lacks the Copy button. This is because all information in the tab is language-dependent.

In KMFasTrans, the menus and menu-items you see in the tab are only those that lead to pages where the module can be displayed. These pages depend on the type and language of the module and the language of the menu item.

So the menu items are filtered using the rules in the table below:

In all other cases different from those indicated in the table, the module will not be accessible from the menu item, so it adds clarity to the tab eliminating all those menu items that lead to pages where the module never will display and also those menus that after the filtration above do not contain any menu item.

Remember that a menu module assigned to Language "All" should display a menu wich only contains menu items assigned to Language "All". This module will display for all Content Languages.

Rememeber also that a menu module assigned to a specific Language may display a menu containing menu items assigned to the same language as well as menu items assigned to Language "All". This module will display for the specific language only.

With KMFasTrans you will not have to worry about whether a module will be displayed or not on a page as the menu items shown in this fieldset automatically met the above rules.

To further increase the clarity of the tab, in the source language the unselected menu items and the menus that do not contain any menu item selected are hidden.

In the example of the figure above you can see that in the source language (English (en-GB) menus and menu items appear only in English or in language, "All" (MENU IN LANGUAGE ALL menu), and in the target language (German (DE)) menus and menu items appear only in German language or in language "All" (Menu item in language All).

Only selected items are shown in the image because this is the way it was decided by clicking on the 'Hide' link in the Unselected Menus: Show Hide menu. If you want to see all the menu items, whether or not they are selected, you just have to click on the 'Show' link in the same menu.

KMFasTrans selects in the target language all the menu items that are translations from menu items selected in the source item. In the example are those that are boxed in green. For those for whom the translation can not be found, which are the boxes in red and blue, the corresponding inconsistencies are shown in the inconsistencies table. When solving each inconsistency, that is, create the translation in the example, the new translation created will be selected in the list of menu items of the target language.

Quick Tip

• If you are using the "Translate" button for machine translation from the configured Translation Service, and are not satisfied with the result, you can try to changing the source language to another language (if you have translations to more than one language and the new selected source item has no inconsistencies). Translations from a translation service are often different depending on the source language of the translation.