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Configure Translation Behavior for Webpages with GDN Rules

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

By default, the Smartling Global Delivery Network (GDN) is set up to capture all pages on your source domain, and rewrites links within pages that point to your source site. In some cases, you may want to make exceptions to this default behavior. To achieve this, Smartling offers a set of tools within your Smartling GDN project that allow you to control some capture and translation behaviors of your GDN site. This interface is one of the 3 methods for controlling GDN behavior.

Capture behavior can be controlled at two levels in this interface:

  • Website page level
  • HTML element level
    • Class Names
    • IDs

If you need to control behavior by language, you may need to consider a different method.

To Create a Translation Rule

  1. From your GDN project, click the gear icon > Project Settings > Rules
  2. Click the + New Rule button
  3. Choose your rule category and rule type from the dropdown menus
  4. In the Rule text field, enter your rule parameter
    1. URL rules: Enter full URL path of the page to apply the rule. NOTE: Rules will execute on partial matches. For example, if you enter rule text "/products", your rule will apply to any page that contains /products in its URL.
    2. HTML Class or ID rules: Enter an HTML class or ID to apply the rule against. NOTE: If the HTML class or ID is not unique, your rule will be applied to every instance of the HTML element on your site.
  5. Click Save to create your rule or Cancel to start over

Rule Categories

  • Requests that Match URLs - Any URL matching the URL regular expression entered will have the selected features applied.
  • HTML Elements with Class Names - Any CSS class matching the class name you enter will have the selected features applied.
  • HTML Elements with IDs - Any HTML element matching the id value you enter will have the selected features applied.

Rule Types

  • Do Not Translate: Content will not be captured, translations will not be served, links will be rewritten.
  • Do Not Localize URLs: links will not be rewritten, content will be captured and translations will be served.
  • Do Not Translate or Localize URLs: Content will not be captured, translations will not be served, links will not be rewritten.
  • Do Not Capture Content: Content will not continue to be captured after enabling this rule. Any existing translations for a page will continue to be served.
  • Remove Content from Page: Only applicable to HTML Class or ID rules. The element will be hidden from the localized page.

Translation Rules apply across all domains in a given Global Delivery Network project. If you need to configure translation behavior for individual domains, or need more advanced control over translation behavior, consult our GDN Integration Tag Library.

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