Smartling offers flexibility in workflows that can be fully customized. After you create a workflow, the next step is to configure it to your preference. The settings in the workflow configuration will often require input from your translation vendor. You can give your vendor access to one or more of these workflow steps and configure them based on yours and their requirements.
Important considerations are regarding your translation provider, task delegation, and automation.
We recommend discussing your preferences with your vendor before proceeding.
If you prefer watching to reading, check out our video tutorial on creating a workflow in Smartling.
How to Configure Workflow Step Settings
- In a Smartling Project, go to the Workflow Configuration
- Click on any existing step
- Excluding the Processing step.
- Click Manage Step to configure the following workflow step settings:
Step Name
Type to edit. Updates made to the Settings (below) are applied to this step.
Translation Provider
For translations steps. Choose human translators (Smartling Language Services, a vendor or translation resource users) or Machine Translation from the dropdown (or create your own MT Profile).
Step Type
Edit, Review, or Post-Machine Revision steps only
Update the step type from the dropdown list.
Alternate MT Profile
This field is seen on a translation step when the Translation Provider is an MT Profile. Select an alternative MT Profile from the dropdown list of all MT Profiles on your account. The alternative MT Profile will automatically translate content if the Translation Provider MT Profile fails for any reason (e.g. invalid API key, unsupported language, placeholder or tag inconsistency). You can add as many MT Profiles as required, with the prioritization order being from first listed to last.
Fallback Method
This field is seen on a translation step when the Translation Provider is an MT Profile. Select an option from the dropdown to automatically move strings to another workflow, if errors are flagged, and content cannot be machine-translated.
Errors
If the Translation Provider MT Profile and/or Alternate MT Profile fails to translate a string with a validation error 3 times in a row within 30 mins.
Validation error: this happens when the MT returns a translation which one or more of the following:
- an empty string
- a string containing a different number of placeholders compared to the string
- a string containing a different number of tags compared to the source string
- a string containing different tags in translation compared to the source
When a string fails with a validation error, Smartling creates an issue for the string, so you are aware that it can't be translated by the chosen Translation Provider. The Fallback Method takes effect at the same time.
Fallback Method Options
The Fallback Method dropdown includes the following options:
- A translation step (human translation or MT profile)
- A decision step
- If the step is in an account-level workflow, options are a step in another account-level workflow, or in the same workflow.
- If the step is in a project-level workflow, options are a step in a project-level workflow in the same project or in account-level workflow, or in the same workflow.
The Fallback Method workflow should support all source and target languages from the original workflow.
Glossary Term Insertion
Choose to enable Glossary Term Insertion for Machine Translation.
Settings
Users can revise content
- On: allows users to type and make edits to translations in the translation field in the CAT Tool.
- Off: locks the translation field for editing. Translation Resources, Translation Resource Managers and Agency Owner users cannot type or make edits to translations. Users can raise Issues and perform LQA review. This is useful if you want resources to review translations without editing.
Automatically submit edits by users
- On: submits translations to the next step once the user saves the string, or clicks Saves All.
- Off: users must click Submit to submit the translations to the next step. It is recommended that users click Save All before clicking Submit.
Users can reject content to another step
- On: allows users to select a step to send rejected content to (excludes decision steps). By default, rejected content is sent back to the translation step. Only resources assigned to a step with the Resources can reject and edit published content option enabled will be able to reject published content. Enable to choose a step from the workflow. If no results are found, that indicates there is no step before the current step you are editing.
- Off: reverts to default behavior - rejected content is sent to the translation step.
Users can reject and edit published content
- On: allows users to reject or update published translations, either in the CAT Tool or Strings View/List View. Includes locked strings in the CAT Tool, and excludes Quick Edits or TM updates.
- Off: users cannot reject or edit published strings in the CAT Tool or Strings View/List View (excluding Quick Edits or TM Edits).
Enable content assignment
-
On: all content must be assigned before resources can work on it
- Must be enabled to allow claiming (next setting)
- Off: all content will be available for all resources to use.
Allow claiming by linguists
-
On: Translation Resource users will view and claim translation tasks in Available to Accept
- Enable content assignment must be enabled first
- Off: translation resource users will view all available work in Current Work (recommended if you prefer to assign linguists to tasks)
Allow offline work: Users can export an .xliff file of assigned content, part of Translation Memory and project Glossary.
Quality Assurance
Do not use this step for Linguistic Quality Assurance: This is the default setting. When this setting is ticked, linguists do not have the option to log LQA errors in the CAT Tool.
Use this step for Linguistic Quality Assurance: If the workflow step should be used to carry out Linguistic Quality Assurance (LQA), please select this option. Then choose the desired LQA schema from the drop-down menu. This will enable linguists working in the CAT Tool to evaluate translations and log LQA errors.
Users can send modified translations to original project: This functionality is part of a beta product. For more information, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager.
Automation
TM Match Skipping (Edit, Review, or Post-Machine Revision steps only)
On: automatically moves strings to the next step in the workflow if the TM Match is at least the percentage indicated in the field below.
Off: strings must be submitted to the next step by the resource assigned to the step.
- Never: strings are only published when they are submitted from the final step in the workflow.
- On save: strings are published when the user saves the string.
- On submit: strings are published when the users submit the translations.
If pre-publish is enabled for a Translation step using an MT Profile, the unedited machine translation will be pre-published to the final environment, but it will not be saved to the Translation Memory. Pre-published human translations will be pre-published to the final environment and also saved to the TM.
Both TM Match Skipping and Pre-publish strings cannot be enabled on the same workflow step.
If prepublishing is enabled on a workflow step of an Account Workflow, strings in any project that uses that workflow will also be prepublished.
Idle Strings (Edit, Review, or Post-Machine Revision steps only)
Send an email notification and/or automatically move strings to the next step in the workflow if they have been in the step for a set period. For more information, read Idle String Rule.
CAT Tool Pre-Populate
- Pre-populate TM Match Threshold (%): Minimum fuzzy match % for which pre-population will occur.
- Pre-populate TM matches if score is above 0%: Pre-populate translations with TM matches above 0%
- Pre-populate Machine Translation if there's no TM match available over 0%: If the above option is enabled, you might want to also enable MT should there be no TM matches above 0% available.
Enabling this setting will override the user's preferences in the CAT Tool.
What's Next?
Once you have a workflow configured, the next step is to assign the people to each of the workflow steps (or tasks). Once that is complete (and they have activated their account if a new user), the final step is to ensure you have the right people assigned to each step.
After that, you're ready to translate content in the workflow!
Don't forget to check out how to Change a Default Workflow for a language.