ClickHelp User Manual

Translation Process Overview

This topic will introduce you to the translation workflow in ClickHelp in the form of a tutorial. We will go through all of the steps needed to deliver the translated documentation to your readers.

This tutorial suggests that you have some prior knowledge of working with ClickHelp. Specifically, creating projects and editing content. If you're unfamiliar with this functionality, we suggest that you go over our tutorial series first: Quick Start Guide. For a more in-depth experience, you can reference other section of the manual, like Authoring.

Create a Project and Set the Base Language

The first thing you would want to do when starting with translations in ClickHelp is to make sure you have correctly specified the base language for your projects. Picking the correct language is important for Natural Language Processing features to work correctly. If you still have no projects, go ahead and create one.

	Note
When you create the first project in a certain language, a copy of the Home page, global variables, and global settings are created for this language.

Create Translation Project

After you have completed authoring content in the base project and ready to start translating it, you will need to create a translation project. Translation projects can not exist on their own, so there must always be a base project first.

On the Projects page, click the Add Language button.
Create Translation Project Wizard will open.

You will need to specify:
1. Translation language — we chose German for this tutorial.
2. Translation project name — you can leave the autogenerated one; we have specified Meine Dokumentationsprojekt.
3. Translation project ID — you can leave the autogenerated one as well.
4. If you want to localize images as well, check the checkbox. We're going to use the original images for this translation project.
After the system finishes translation creation, click Finish.

Important

There can be only one translation project in the specific language associated with the base project.

For example, you can create German and French versions of your project, but you can't create two German translations unless they have different locales — like German (Germany) and German (Switzerland).

You will see that the project on the dashboard now has a new label specifying the language you added, and the translation project is already selected:
The Translation Project with a special label

Translate Content

Let's open the translation project. Either click on its name or the Open button underneath it. You will see a familiar author interface that you used to author content in your project when you do so. But when you click the Edit button, you will not see a Topic Editor, but instead, a Translation Editor will open:

Let's go ahead and translate a few units by clicking into space to the right of the original:

Translating the unit right to the original

	Tip
You can quickly switch to the next translation unit by hitting Ctrl + Alt + Down Arrow.

Do not forget to set the appropriate translation unit state for each unit when you're done translating them. Alternatively, you can translate everything and mark all of the units as Final.

Set the translation unit state for each unit

All that's left is to publish our documentation!

	Note
If you also want to translate the Reader Menu and the Home page, read the relevant topics: Translate Reader Menu Items Translate Home Page

Create Translation Publication

Each translation publication must be associated with a base publication. So, before you can press Publish with your translation project selected, you need to create a publication of the base project. After you create an online publication for your base language, you can now publish its translation. Click on the de-DE label to switch to your German project and click Publish:

Click the Publish button on the Projects page to publish the translation project

You will specify Output type, Publishing mode, Publication name, Publication visibility, Output tags, and whether to publish only Ready topics. We'll create a public online publication called Meine Dokumentation - Deutsch.

	Tip
Your translation publication can have not only different text and images but also different TOC structure or include/exclude certain topics or pieces of content. You can utilize Conditional Content for this.

After the wizard finishes the publishing process, you'll see a link to your translated publication, which you can now visit.

Translation publication in the Reader UI

Important

There can be only one translation publication in the specific language associated with a single base publication.

For example, you can create German and French versions of your publication, but you can't create two German translation publications unless they have different locales — like German (Germany) and German (Switzerland).

Congratulations! Now you're ready to start using translation/localization functionality in full power. If you want to translate not only the content, but other parts of the documentation like the home page and index keywords, read the following topics:

To learn more about creating multi-language documentation in ClickHelp, do not forget to check out our other topics on this matter:

Create Multi-Language Documentation Translate Home Page