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 NMT Hub, translations are completed by the MT Profile configured for Smartling Translate in your account's Machine Translation Settings.

Video Tutorial

Requirements

General

• A Smartling account (any tier)
• An active Account Owner, Project Manager or Requester user role
• Enable machine translation in Smartling Translate

File

• • Supported file types
  • Max file size: 200 MB

Text requirements

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

Accessing Smartling Translate

Option 1

If you have access to Smartling's AI Translation Hub, click into the Hub from the top navigation.

Then use the Quick Access panel on the right side to navigate to the Smartling Translate portal.

Option 2

If you do not have access to the AI Translation 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:

Translate Text

To translate text:

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. 

Translate Files

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 🦾 Machine Translation & MT Profiles.