This article is for Account Owners and Project Managers using the Global Delivery Network.

The Smartling Global Delivery Network (GDN) allows you to capture and translate the URL paths that appear on your localized sites along with the rest of your website content. This feature is useful in cases where your website URLs directly reflect the information contained on your page. Translating these URL paths can enhance the end-user experience on your localized sites.

URL Translation happens outside any other content translation. For example, it will not be included in any Job Automation rules.

To translate your URLs without breaking any links on your site, follow these steps:

1. Capture your URLs.
2. Authorize URLs for translation.
3. When translation is complete, switch over to the translated URLs.
4. Filter unwanted URLs from translation.

Capture Your URLs

URLs are captured as you navigate to a page and are translated the same way as any other string. To get started, do the following:

• From your GDN project, go to the Settings tab > URL Translations to enable either automatic or manual URL translation capture.

  

Automatic

1. Turn on the "Enable capture of URL strings" toggle.
   
2. URLs will now be ingested as you or an automation tool browses your site.

Manual

1. Click the "+ Add URL" button.
   
2. In the dialog box, enter your URL and click "Add."

Authorize URLs for Translation

As URLs are captured or added, they appear in the URL Translations pane. The default view displays your source URLs.

To authorize URLs for translation:

1. Select a language from the "Select a locale" drop-down menu.
2. For each language, click "Translate", or check multiple URLs and use the Actions > Request Translation option.
   
3. URL strings will then be authorized into the default workflow for the language. The translation column will update to "Translation in Progress" for each requested URL.

Switch over to Translated URLs

Once translation is complete for your URLs, you can switch over to them as follows.

1. Turn on the "Enable URL Translation functionality" toggle.
2. Select a language from the "Select a locale" drop-down menu.
3. In the Actions column, turn on the toggle for an individual URL, or check multiple URLs and click the Actions menu > Enable URLs.

Turning off this toggle at any time will turn off all translated URLs. For a consistent launch, we recommend leaving this toggle off until all URLs are translated.

Filter Unwanted URLs from Translation

Your website may include URLs you want to avoid translating, such as CSS or JavaScript resources. Leaving these URLs in the URL Translations menu won't affect functionality, but removing them can improve management of the URLs you do want translated. 

To filter out these unwanted URLs:

1. Go to the Settings tab > URL Filters. 
2. Click "Add Filter." Filters are formatted as a Java regular expression inside capture groups denoted by parentheses. For example, (.+\.js) will exclude any URLs ending in .js.
3. Click "Add."

Filter rules only apply to future URL path capture. If you have already captured unwanted URL paths, you will need to clear them from your capture list manually (Content > URL Translation > Translations > Actions > Remove URLs). Moving forward, paths matching your filter will not be re-captured.