This article is considered appropriate for administrators or workspace users with an intermediate level of knowledge about submission portals. If you are a beginner, we recommend to read the following article first:
For more information about suggested learning paths, see Introduction to Submission Portals: START HERE.
Contents
- Overview
- Where to Find the Portal Translation Page
- Configuring Google Translation
- Submission Portal Experience
- Customizing the Portal Translations
- Custom Portal URL
- Available Languages
Overview
Zengine's Portal Language Translation feature allows for easier engagement and accessibility with a program for portal users who may not communicate in English as a primary language. Administrators can configure a Google Translation of all on-screen and help text (including fields and any text on the program’s forms) by setting a default language for all portal users and choosing which of 108 language options they have access to for a translation.
This article will explain where to find the Translations page and how to configure different language options, discuss the portal user experience when translations are enabled, and show how to customize the translations.
--- IMPORTANT ---
This feature must be turned on to be utilized. Please contact our Support Team to inquire about enabling this feature in a workspace.
Where to Find the Portal Translation Page
Contact our Support Team to start the feature activation process.
In the Submission Portal Settings, the Portal Translation Page is found on the Translations tab of the Portal Settings page.
- Logged into a program as an administrator, navigate to the Settings & Tools section by selecting the cog wheel icon in the top navigation bar.
- Select the Submission Portal tile from the Plugin Settings section.
- Select the Edit button to the appropriate submission portal.
- In the Portal Settings section on the right side of the screen, navigate to the Translations tab.
- The area to enable Google Translations is on the Configuration sub-tab under the Translations tab.
NOTE: If Portal Translations has not yet been enabled by Support, a message appears that reads Translations not Enabled: Please contact your implementation specialist to get this feature on your portal. If this is the case, please contact our Support Team to enable this feature before continuing.
- Check the box next to Google Translation, if it is not already checked. This will cause additional configuration options to appear.
Configuring Google Translation
Once the Translation feature has been enabled, the Default Language and any other language(s) a portal user should have access to can be designated.
The Default Language is the language that portal users will first see when visiting the submission portal.
To change the default language:
- Select the dropdown menu next to Default Language on the Configuration sub-tab (still within the Translations tab) and choose the desired default language.
The Portal Translation feature will run any submission portal page through Google Translate from the default language to a language that the portal user selects. The options available to the portal user must be configured by an administrator ahead of time, though this is simple to do.
To select the languages available to portal users:
- Find the Available Languages section on the Configuration sub-tab page, below Default Language. This section will appear as a checklist of 108 language options.
- Select any languages that should appear in the submission portal as available options by checking the box next to the language. If all languages are left unchecked, all 108 languages will be available.
- When the portal’s language options have been configured, select the blue Save all settings button in the lower right corner of the screen.
Submission Portal Experience
Unless accessing a custom submission portal URL (see Custom Portal URL below), a portal user will encounter a portal login screen with text in the language set as the Default Language by administrators, with the ability to change the language to any of the configured language options.
- The portal user will access the submission portal login screen by going to the portal URL.
- When translations are enabled, a globe icon shows at the top of the login screen, in the gray bar that separates the header image (if present) from the rest of the screen.
- Selecting this globe icon will display the available languages for translation.
- Selecting a language from the dropdown list will immediately translate the webpage into that language.
All pages in the submission portal will appear in that language for the portal user unless the language is changed. See the screenshot below for an example.
The Submissions Page translated into Spanish.
- The globe icon will be located in the same position on any screen (in the upper right corner) once a portal user is logged in. This button can be selected at any time to change the language to a different available option or revert back to the default language.
TIP: Add instructional text in different languages to the login screen directing a portal user to the globe icon if they want to change the language to one they are more familiar with.
Customizing the Portal Translations
The Portal Translations feature effectively translates each page of the submission portal using Google Translate when that page is visited in a new language for the first time: it sends each word, phrase, or sentence to Google Translate, and then collects the translations and stores them for future page visits.
However, automated translation is challenging, as most languages can have multiple translations for a word or phrase that vary in meaning based on context. Because each page is translated one word, phrase, or sentence at a time, that context may be missing or unclear. As a result, on occasion, there may be translations that don’t quite seem to be correct to a native speaker of that language.
Luckily, Zengine provides the option to edit these automated translations in the Submission Portal Settings. A CSV file can also be imported with custom translations to update many translated words or phrases at once.
The options to customize individual translations can be found on the Customize sub-tab, under the Translations tab of Portal Settings.
- From the Translations tab, select the Customize sub-tab.
- If Portal Translations have recently been enabled but the submission portal pages have not yet been accessed in a different language, no translations will be shown here. Instead, the following message will show:
Because Zengine translates each page in the submission portal only when that page is visited in a new language for the first time, this message may appear until at least one page has been accessed in a different language and translated. This configuration page can be populated by accessing each page of the submission portal using a test record, translating each page into different languages as it is accessed.
- If various pages have been accessed and translated, however, the Customize sub-tab will show a list of individual words and phrases that have been translated, as shown in the screenshot example below.
This page consists of several components:
A. The Search Bar (see Changing a Single Translation below)
B. The Import button (see Changing Translations in Bulk via Importing below)
C. Translation Table column headings
There are five Translation Table column headings:
- TEXT: the entries in this column will consist of words, phrases, or sentences in the Default Language.
- TRANSLATIONS: this column consists of the translations of corresponding row entries in the TEXT column.
- FROM: the abbreviation of the Default Language (the language of entries in the TEXT column)
-
TO: the abbreviation of the translated language (the language of entries in the TRANSLATIONS column)
- See Available Languages section below for a list of abbreviations and corresponding languages.
- OVERRIDE - indicates whether this is the initial translation (N, for No, the translation has not been overridden by an administrator) or if the translation has been customized (Y, for Yes, the translation has been overridden with a customized translation)
For example, in the second row, this information indicates that the phrase “Error code” (TEXT column), a phrase in English (abbreviated en in the FROM column) is translated to “Code d’erreur” (TRANSLATION column) in French (abbreviated fr in the TO column), and this translation has not been customized (indicated with N in the OVERRIDE column).
NOTE: The Translation Table on this screen will be populated as pages are accessed in each different available language. This may result in a table showing some items translated into some languages, but not all. If the list is missing certain words or phrases, or only some languages are present in this table, that is because the submission portal pages containing these items have not yet been accessed in a given language.
Changing a Single Translation
Customizing the translation for a single word, phrase, or sentence is simple.
- Locate the row that contains the translation to customize.
- Select the Edit button on the right side of that row.
- This will bring up a popup message box showing the original text in the default language (highlighted in left image below), with a text box showing the current translation (highlighted in right image below). Select the text box and edit the translation as needed.
- Select the blue Save button in the lower corner of the popup message.
- Upon saving the changes, the row in the Translation Table containing this translation will be updated. In addition, the entry in the OVERRIDE column will change from N to Y, indicating that this translation has been updated by an administrator.
Searching for a Translation
While the process for customizing a single translated word or phrase is simple, finding the specific translation to be customized may not be, particularly if the Translation Table is complete, with potentially hundreds or thousands of items in different languages. For that reason, the Portal Translation tool provides a Search translation text feature to help administrators find the specific translation to customize.
This search bar can be found at the top of the Customize sub-tab in the Translations tab in Portal Settings.
To find a translated word, phrase, or sentence to customize:
- In the left-hand text field (labeled Search translation text), enter the word or phrase to find. This should be in the default language (i.e., what would be listed under the TEXT column).
- Select the central drop down menu (labeled Select To Language) to open a dropdown menu containing a full list of possible languages. Choose the language which contains the translation to customize.
For example, to customize the Spanish language translation of the English term “Logout,”:
A. Enter Logout in the search bar
B. Select Spanish in the Select To Language dropdown menu as shown in the screenshot below.
C. Select the blue Search button.
NOTE: The search tool is inclusive, and will automatically include any results that contain the word or phrase entered into the search bar; the results do not have to match perfectly.
- Follow the instructions above (see Changing a Single Translation) to customize the results of this search.
- To return to the full Translation Table list, clear the left-hand search bar of any entry and select the blue Search button again.
Changing Translations in Bulk via Importing
If an administrator needs to customize more than a few translations, it may be more efficient to edit those translations in a different software and import the updated translations into Zengine. This process involves exporting the Translation Table as a CSV file, editing the Translations in a different software (usually a spreadsheet application, such as Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets), and importing the updated CSV file back into the workspace.
To customize translations in bulk via importing:
- Begin by locating the Select To Language dropdown menu at the top of the Customize sub-tab, above the Translation Table.
- In the Select To Language dropdown menu, select the desired language. The export tool will only export all translated items for a single language at one time.
- To the right of the blue Search button, a new blue button labeled Export will appear. (This button will not appear until a language is selected.)
There should now be a blue Export button and a blue Import button.
- Select Export. This will begin exporting the Translation Table rows for the specified language as a CSV file.
- After the exporting is complete, open the downloaded CSV file using a spreadsheet application. A spreadsheet will appear that looks similar to the Translation Table, with corresponding rows and columns and translation data in each cell.
- Make any edits in the translations column to customize the translation for each row.
- Save the edited CSV file to a local drive.
- Return to the Customize sub-tab of the Translations tab in the Submission Portal Settings, and select the blue Import button.
- Selecting the Import button will bring up a popup message Select CSV file to upload.
- Select Choose File and choose the CSV file that was edited and saved in Step 6 above, then, select the blue Import button in the lower-right corner of this message.
The importer tool will compare the items in the Translation Table to the imported CSV file and update any translations it identifies as different.
- The Translation Tool will show any changes that have been imported, but this is a preview. The Export button has changed to read Confirm; to finalize the import, select the blue Confirm button.
After confirming, the changes will be made permanent. Any imported translations will also have the value in the OVERRIDE column changed from N to Y to reflect that those translations have been manually customized.
Custom Portal URL
An administrator can also share the portal URL with a specific language already selected for the user. In using this option, portal users will be allowed to interact with the same portal, but there is no need for them to select the language for translation as the portal will already be translated for them.
The URL that is shared with portal users will look something like this when Spanish is selected: https://webportalapp.com/sp/es_wizehive#sp.
It's the portal URL with a # symbol and the language abbreviation:
- The https://webportalapp.com/sp/ portion of the URL is the base URL for the Zengine submission portal, and is the same for all submission portals.
- The es_wizehive portion is the custom, unique URL slug (for more information, please see the article The Submission Portal URL.) This part of the URL must be unique for every submission portal, and can be customized when setting up a submission portal.
- The standard URL to this submission portal (in the default language) would be https://webportalapp.com/sp/es_wizehive.
- The #sp tells the submission portal to automatically translate the portal login page immediately, without any input from the portal user. In this case, the sp is a language abbreviation that redirects the portal user to a Spanish language translation of the site.
A list of all supported language abbreviations is below (Available Languages).
Setting up this option can be useful when there are portal users from different countries who will likely access the Submission Portal login page with no knowledge of English (or whatever is selected as the default language), and may find it difficult to change the language options without instructions in their native language.
The abbreviation can be changed for as many languages needed to share out to the portal users. Send the corresponding link to each group.
NOTE: This option requires the language translation feature to be enabled and configured in the portal.
Available Languages
Below is a list of the available languages for translation, preceded by their abbreviations that can be used in importing custom translations (see Customizing the Portal Translations above) or creating a custom portal URL that is already translated (see Custom Portal URL above).
- af: Afrikaans
- sq: Albanian
- am: Amharic
- ar: Arabic
- hy: Armenian
- az: Azerbaijani
- eu: Basque
- be: Belarusian
- bn: Bengali
- bs: Bosnian
- bg: Bulgarian
- ca: Catalan
- ceb: Cebuano
- zh-CN: Chinese (Simplified)
- zh-TW: Chinese (Traditional)
- co: Corsican
- hr: Croatian
- cs: Czech
- da: Danish
- nl: Dutch
- en: English
- eo: Esperanto
- et: Estonian
- fi: Finnish
- fr: French
- fy: Frisian
- gl: Galician
- ka: Georgian
- de: German
- el: Greek
- gu: Gujarati
- ht: Haitian Creole
- ha: Hausa
- haw: Hawaiian
- iw: Hebrew
- hi: Hindi
- hmn: Hmong
- hu: Hungarian
- is: Icelandic
- ig: Igbo
- id: Indonesian
- ga: Irish (Gaelic)
- it: Italian
- ja: Japanese
- jw: Javanese
- kn: Kannada
- kk: Kazakh
- km: Khmer
- rw: Kinyarwanda
- ko: Korean
- ku: Kurdish (Kurmanji)
- ky: Kyrgyz
- lo: Lao
- lv: Latvian
- lt: Lithuanian
- lb: Luxembourgish
- mk: Macedonian
- mg: Malagasy
- ms: Malay
- ml: Malayalam
- mt: Maltese
- mi: Maori
- mr: Marathi
- mn: Mongolian
- my: Myanmar (Burmese)
- ne: Nepali
- no: Norwegian
- ny: Nyanja (Chichewa)
- or: Odia (Oriya)
- ps: Pashto
- fa: Persian
- pl: Polish
- pt: Portuguese
- pa: Punjabi
- ro: Romanian
- ru: Russian
- sm: Samoan
- gd: Scots Gaelic
- sr: Serbian
- st: Sesotho
- sn: Shona
- sd: Sindhi
- si: Sinhala (Sinhalese)
- sk: Slovak
- sl: Slovenian
- so: Somali
- es: Spanish
- su: Sundanese
- sw: Swahili
- sv: Swedish
- tl: Tagalog (Filipino)
- tg: Tajik
- ta: Tamil
- tt: Tatar
- te: Telugu
- th: Thai
- tr: Turkish
- tk: Turkmen
- uk: Ukrainian
- ur: Urdu
- ug: Uyghur
- uz: Uzbek
- vi: Vietnamese
- cy: Welsh
- xh: Xhosa
- yi: Yiddish
- yo: Yoruba
- zu: Zulu