Translate Text or Files Instantly With Smartling Translate

Smartling Translate allows you to translate text or files instantly, without any configuration or set up.

Powered by Smartling's AI Hub, translations are completed by the MT Profile configured for Smartling Translate in your account's Instant MT settings.

Video tutorial

Requirements

Smartling Translate needs to be activated by your Smartling Customer Success Manager, and can be enabled for any Smartling account (any tier).

To access Smartling Translate, you will need an active Smartling user account with an Account Owner, Project Manager or Requester user role.

Tip: Smartling offers a limited-access, Smartling Translate–only user role as part of a pilot program. This role provides restricted access specifically to Smartling Translate, without full access to the rest of the Smartling platform. If you’d like to participate in the beta or learn more, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager.

How to set up Smartling Translate

1. Contact your Smartling Customer Success Manager to enable Smartling Translate for your account.
2. Enable machine translation for Smartling Translate:
   1. From the AI Hub in the top navigation bar of your Smartling dashboard, navigate to the Instant MT tab
      
   2. Click into the Smartling Translate tab to enable machine translation for Smartling Translate, and to select the preferred MT Profile
      
3. If desired, enable Glossary Term Insertion.
   • Select the glossary/glossaries that should be referenced for translations in Smartling Translate.
   • Select your preferred insertion type.

Accessing Smartling Translate

Option 1

For users with a Project Manager or Account Owner role, Smartling Translate can be accessed from the AI Hub:

• From the top navigation bar of your Smartling dashboard, click into the AI Hub.
  
• Under Tools, click Smartling Translate.
  

Option 2

If you do not have access to the AI Hub, you will instead see a toggle in the top navigation bar, which allows you to switch between Smartling Translate and the Smartling TMS (Translation Management System). Select Smartling Translate from the dropdown, as shown:

Translating text

Text requirements

• Under 1,000 characters
• Tags or placeholders are not supported

How to translate text snippets

1. Click the Translate Text toggle
2. Choose your languages (the language you are writing in and the languages you want translations in)
   • Type to search for a locale
   • Alternatively, start typing and let Smartling Translate detect the source language 
   • You can swap source and target languages by clicking the arrows in between both fields
3. Type or paste text for translation into the field below
   • Text translates automatically once you stop typing
   • Character count is displayed at the bottom of the field
   • Source field has a limit of 1,000 characters
4. View translations immediately on the field on the right-hand side
   • If a string cannot be translated for any reason, the untranslated source string is returned
   • If you navigate away from the page, the text will still be available to copy (unless you navigate to the TMS)
5. Click the copy icon to copy translated text

You can use the AI Editor (BETA) to rework and improve your source or translated text. Simply choose a prompt from the dropdown menu and click Submit. 

Translating files

File requirements

• Supported file types
• Max file size: 200 MB

How to translate files

1. Click the Translate Files toggle
2. Choose your languages (the language you are writing in and the languages you want translations in)
   • Type to search for a locale
   • Alternatively, upload the file and let Smartling Translate detect the source language 
3. Drag & drop or select files from your local drive for translation
   • See supported file types
   • Max file size: 200 MB
   • For XML files, confirm the file is XML or Android XML
4. Click Translate
5. Click Download (or Download All if more than one file) download translations to your local drive
   • If a string cannot be translated for any reason, the untranslated source string is returned
   • If you navigate away from the page, the translated files will still be available to download, until you click Start Over (unless you navigate to the TMS)
6. Click Start Over to translate another file
   • Once clicked, previously translated files are no longer available to download

Supported file types

The following is a list of file types you can translate on Smartling Translate.

We recommend reading the documentation each to learn about how Smartling handles each file type during the translation process. You can control some of this behavior by using file directives. The directives that are supported on Smartling Translate are flagged accordingly in the file's documentation.

• CSV*
• DITA
• DOCM
• DOCX
• FLARE
• HTML
• IDML
• MARKDOWN
• PLAIN TEXT
• PPTX
• RESX
• SRT
• SVG
• VTT
• XLIFF 2.0
• XLSX
• XML
• PDF

*Smartling Translate supports single locale per downloaded file today. We plan to add support for multiple language file downloads for these file types in the future.

Supported languages

The supported languages in Smartling Translate depend on the MT Provider you are using. The best way to find out if a language is supported is to type the language name into the source/target language field.

Supported language pairs

Not all language pairs are supported by the MT providers used in Smartling Translate. If a user selects an unsupported language pair, an error is flagged encouraging you to remove the unsupported pair before translation. If you choose an unsupported language pair when translating a file, the translate button is disabled until you remove any unsupported pairs.

Cross-locale adaptation is not supported, e.g. en-US > en-GB.

Tip: For information on our MT Providers and their supported languages, read Supported MT and LLM Providers