About Translation Management
Overview of Translation Management Features
With translation management, you are able to:
• Create a translation package from an information group, an information structure, a publication section, or a publication structure.
• Create a quotation package from a publication structure or an information structure.
• Include only the dynamic documents you choose by assigning the proper translation attribute and life cycle state.
• Support multiple translation vendors.
• Include a PDF representation of the publication structure in the translation package.
• Restrict creation of translation packages to authorized translation users.
• Collect the translatable text, such as titles, from the publication structure, information structure, parts lists, Creo/Illustrate 3D illustration (.c3di) files, and put into XLIFF documents. XLIFF documents are only generated automatically for information structure root, publication section, and parts lists. If you create a translation package at the group or publication section level, the XLIFF document will not be generated automatically.
• Include PDFs of dynamic documents in a translation package for vendor reference.
• Translate from a source language to a target language via an intermediary language called a pivot language.
• Determine how approved content is collected for the translation package.
• Automate the creation of translation packages using workflows.
• Automatically associate translated dynamic documents with their source.
• Replace a source document with one of its translated documents.
• Use custom subtypes and life cycle states after proper configuration.
• Create separate translation packages for nested structures.
• Publish translated dynamic documents to PDF or Arbortext Content Delivery bundles.
Overview of the Translation Process
The high-level process you follow to produce translations:
1. Configure Windchill Service Information Manager Translation Management before you begin. Refer to Translation Management Support and Translation Configuration Process for instructions.
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The following provides a minimum set of basic configuration steps that allow you to become familiar with the features of translation management. For a production environment, be sure to consult Translation Configuration Process.
• Set up global enumeration languages in Windchill Type and Attribute Management. Language codes in Source Languages, Supported Languages and Language Pairs translation preferences must map to global enumeration language values. For information, see Setting Up Languages.
• Create a folder for outgoing translation packages. Then, set the Supported Vendors translation preference to specify a vendor and the path to that folder. For example:
◦ VendorA|D:\translation\tobetranslated, to export to an external folder
◦ VendorA|wt.library.WTLibrary|Translated_Package_Library, to export to a product, library, or project context in Windchill
• Create another folder on the file system for incoming translated packages. Then set the External Import Folder translation preference to specify the path to that folder. For example, d:\translation\translated.
You can store a document that contains the translation package in a Windchill product, library, or project context. In this case, the document is imported when it is set to a state that matches the Translated State preference and the External Import Folder preference is not used.
• Create a library in Windchill called Translation Package Data as specified in the Translation Package Data Context translation preference.
• Create a library in Windchill called Translated to store the translated content as specified in the Supported Languages translation preference.
• If your dynamic documents do not use the default life cycle values, specify your translation ready state in the Preparation State translation preference.
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2. Upload dynamic documents into Windchill. These documents need to have two attributes that match the values set for the Translate Attribute and Document Language Attribute preferences. These attributes determine whether the document is translatable and its source language. For more information about preparing dynamic documents, refer to Setting Up Dynamic Documents.
3. Set up a publication structure or an information structure and populate it with dynamic documents and parts lists. For information about parts lists, see About Windchill Service Parts.
4. Set the proper life cycle state on dynamic documents. Dynamic documents need to be approved for translation before producing a translation package by setting their state. The state is the value of the Preparation State preference. Be sure to set this state on child documents of compound documents as well. Life cycle states determine translation workflow actions and are explained in Translation Workflow States.
5. Before creating a translation package, check that the Translate Attribute is set to yes on all dynamic documents that you want to include, or they are skipped, regardless of their state. For more information, see Translation Packages.
6. XLIFF documents contain instructions and content, such as titles and attributes for objects in the service structure. XLIFF objects also need to be set to the approved state using the Preparation State value. When you are ready to create a translation package, you can have the XLIFFs generated automatically by setting the Create XLIFF Automatically translation preference to Yes. Otherwise, you can generate XLIFFs manually by choosing Generate Translation Document from the service structure context menu in advance of creating the translation package. XLIFFs are generated for the entire service structure from the top level.
If you generate the XLIFFs automatically, they are set to the same Preparation State as the service structure. If you generate the XLIFFs manually, you need to set their state to the value of the Preparation State preference to include them with the translation package. In both cases, the XLIFFs are included with the translation package sent to the translation vendors.
Learn about manually generating XLIFFs in Generating a Translation XLIFF Document.
7. When your content is ready to create a translation package, launch Create Translation Package from the service structure’s Actions menu. Choose the vendor and the target languages for which you want to create packages. You can choose to create a Quote package instead. For more information, see Creating a Translation Package.
8. Choose whether to immediately package the content already in the approved state (the value of Preparation State) or start the translation process now but wait until all the content in the structure is set to the approved state.
The Content already approved option creates a translation package immediately from the service structure’s content.
The Wait for all content to be approved option starts the translation package process for the content set to the approved state. However, if some of the service structure’s content has not yet been approved, this choice allows the translation process to check and collect the content as it’s approved. After all the content is approved and collected, the translation package will be created.
For more information, see Creating a Translation Package.
9. You can use a pivot language to manage the translation from a source language to a target language using an intermediary language. The original source structure and content is first translated to the pivot language, and then the pivot language translations are used as the source for translation to one or more other target languages. If you are using a pivot language, you see the final target language listed as a package languages choice with the pivot noted in parentheses. If you are managing the pivot language to target language translation automatically using the built-in translation process, choose the final target language as the package language. If you are managing the pivot language to target language translation manually, choose the pivot language as the target language. Pivot language configuration is explained in Translation Configuration Process.
10. Translation management creates baselines, collects the documents and XLIFFs, zips the outgoing contents, and places the ZIP file in a folder for the vendor to pick up, one for each language. It creates the target language document objects and sets their life cycle state to the value specified by the In Translation State preference.
If you created a quotation package, target translated documents are not created, the source is not baselined, and a translated package is not imported from a vendor if one is returned.
You can be notified that the translation package has been completed by adding an email notification to the Core Translation Process.
For more information, refer to Workflow Email Notifications.
11. When the vendor is finished with the translation, they return a ZIP file to the folder specified by the External Import Folder preference. This folder is monitored by the Import Translation Process, and it detects when a translation archive is returned. For translation packages that are stored in a Windchill product, library, or project context, the Import Translation Process starts when the state of the package is set to Translated State.
When a returned translation package is detected, it is unzipped, and the contents are compared to the baselines. Then the files are checked in to Windchill as new versions (iterations) for the target translated document objects which were already created.
The state of the translated documents is set to the value of the Translated State preference.
After translated documents are returned and checked in, review the documents for corrections or other changes.
For more information, refer to Managing Translation Objects.
Displaying Translation Information
You can also display some informative translation information in Windchill:
• You can set up a tab from the information page for the service structure to display the Translation Content table. The table displays information about the translatable dynamic documents associated with the service structure.
From the information page, create a new tab. From the Customize menu, choose Related Objects and then choose Translation Content. For more information, see Translation Content Table.
• You can also set up a tab from the information page for the service structure to display the Translation Dashboard table . The table displays information about translations.
From the information page, create a new tab. From the Customize menu, choose Related Objects and then choose Translation Dashboard. For more information, see Translation Dashboard Table.