Sort Translated Dropdown Menus

It's common to have drop downs alphabetically sorted on your site. For example, an address form might have an alphabetized list of countries, allowing for a better user experience. When translating the contents of a drop down menu, options may appear out of order on your translated sites (i.e when Germany is translated to Deutschland).

For these cases, Smartling has a feature that allows you to resort drop downs on your translated site, called the Sort class (sl_sort).

Using the Sort Class

If you include the class sl_sort on the <select> element on your source site, Smartling will reorder the dropdown in each language.

<select name="countryList" class="sl_sort">
   <option value="Albania">Albania</option>
   <option value="France">France</option>
   <option value="Germany">Germany</option>
   <option value="South Africa">South Africa</option>
   <option value="United States">United States</option>
 </select>

 

The Sort works for latin character languages (i.e this method will not work when translating to Chinese). Alternatively, you can use JavaScript to sort drop downs.

Variations

• sl_sort_desc - This will sort the dropdown in descending alphabetical order (from Z to A).
• sl_sort_preserve_top - This will sort the drop down but keep the first entry in place regardless of language. This is useful when the first option is a default value such as "Choose your country".