Export and Import Jobs for Offline Translation - Agency Account Owner

This feature is available for Agency Account Owners via the Project Dashboard.

There may be occasions when you need to take a Job offline and work on it locally. To avoid having your team's work lost for future reference, it is important to remember to import translations back to Smartling once complete. As a requirement, this functionality needs to be enabled on the workflow the Job is authorized in by your client.

It's always advised not to take your work offline, unless absolutely necessary. Working offline means you lose all the features of Smartling that make translation quick and seamless, such as easy access to the Translation Memory, Glossary, Style Guide, ability to open Issues, and translate with Visual Context. Here are some important considerations when using exporting and importing content off the Smartling platform.

Important Considerations for Exporting/Importing Jobs

Loss of transparency

As an Agency Project Manager, you can no longer track your team's progress of translating the content in the translation workflow, and have no insight as to how many resources are translating the content, or how the content is being translated offline.

Loss of data

In addition to loss of transparency in a Job's progress, all data gathered in Smartling reports do not apply to offline translations. This means you have no insight into translation velocity, and changes will not have the data needed to evaluate how long it took for the content to be translated, edited, and how many changes were made by editors.

Loss of context

Translators lose the ability to get the contextual view provided by Visual Context in the CAT Tool, which is key for ensuring they are translating the content under the right context. It is also a vital feature for you to minimize questions around what the content is about, and resolving issues with bad translations.

Loss of direction

If character limits have been applied to strings, this direction will be lost in the exported Job. Because the limits are lost in the exported file, they are not present in the imported file either, meaning strings exceeding character limits can be imported and submitted to the next step in the workflow.

Furthermore, if a linguist has a question about the source content, you won't be able to give them direction by Smartling's Issue feature. Of course, you can take your conversation offline, but you lose the ease of threaded dialog directly associated with a string.

Loss of leverage

Although a TMX file of your Translation Memory can also be exported for offline work, your client's leverage configuration and SmartMatch settings will no longer apply, resulting in the Job taking longer to complete.

Loss of quality checks

The Quality Check Profile that your client configured to suit their translation requirements will not assess translations offline. Furthermore, when translations are imported, they can be submitted to the next step in the workflow, regardless if they flag an error, even if it is set to high severity. This results in any poor offline translations being saved to the Translation Memory.

Translation Memory integrity risks

As imported translations are completed without Quality Checks, without context or direction, and can be saved immediately after import, your client's Translation Memory is exposed to contamination of poor translations. Imported translations can even be in a different language than the target language requested in the Job. The process to remedy this error in their TM is painstakingly long and time-consuming and could result is putting the account at risk for your business.

Markup and code integrity risks

When working online in Smartling, we ensure that all underlying code and markup is protected. Translators cannot alter it, since we protect it by masking it. When you export the content under a flat file (.xliff) all code is visible, and can be altered by anyone with access to the file. This can result in broken code and functionality, leading to more developer time spent on QA and resolving any issues that might come up because of changed code.

Time & cost

The above list of important factors when translating offline, ultimately results in your translations taking longer, neglecting quality, possibly spoiling your client's translation memory and target codebase.

Furthermore, if a Content Owner modifies the Job at all, such as by excluding strings or updating the source content, these changes will not be reflected in your exported files. This can result in your team translating strings that no longer require translation, leading to unpaid work by your team.

We recommended proceeding with caution with offline Jobs.

Prerequisites

• Assignment and offline translation must be enabled for the translation step the Job is in.
  • Your client can enable this in their workflow settings.
• The Job must be authorized and in progress - not awaiting authorization or published.

Project Dashboard

Export

1. Go to the Project Dashboard by clicking Projects on the top navigation and selecting a client Project from the dropdown
2. On the Job you want to take offline, click View Details 
   • This opens the Job Details window, where you can view the languages, workflow step and words that are assigned to your Agency.
3. In the Actions column, click View > Export for the language of the Job you wish to take offline. 
4. Select the files you want to export;
   • Context (XLIFF)
   • Glossary (TBX)
   • Translation Memory (TMX)
   • You can select any combination of files for export. Exporting multiple files with multiple Translation Memory Files might take up to 2 minutes to export.
5. When the translations are complete, follow these steps to importing translations.

Import

1. Go to the Project Dashboard by clicking Projects on the top navigation and selecting a client Project from the dropdown
2. On the Job you want to import translations to, click View Details 
   • This opens the Job Details window, where you can view the languages, workflow step and words that are assigned to your Agency.
3. Once you're ready to import the translated content, go to Actions > Import.
4. Select or drag and drop the .xliff files that you want to import to the Job
   • Only .xliff files are supported for content import.
5. Choose from one of the import options:
   1. Save and remain in the current step: keeps the content you are importing in the current workflow step.
   2. Save and submit to next step: automatically pushes all content you are importing to the next workflow step. 
      • Either option results in the translations being immediately saved to your Translation Memory
6. Click Import