How to manage translations

Introduction

Customers across the globe often choose to shop in their native language. This is why translating your store's content into the languages of the different countries you serve is essential. By doing so, you’ll help international customers understand your product details, marketing messages, and legal terms — potentially boosting your sales.

Let’s dive into a practical example with our "Fashion Store". Assuming you've already configured various shop countries as outlined in our technical onboarding guide, the next step is to navigate the translation process. But what exactly needs translating, and how do we approach this task efficiently?

Manage Translations in SCAYLE

In SCAYLE, the Storefront API determines the language based on the application ID, ensuring users only see content in the appropriate language. If there is no translation, SCAYLE defaults to a preset language defined during the setup of the instance. For maintaining translations and localizations across SCAYLE, here's what you need to know:

Attribute groups, attribute values and master categories must be managed within the SCAYLE Panel or via an Import file.
Checkout Frontend translations need to be maintained in Crowdin.

Additionally, you’ll need to ensure that the store categories used for store navigation are translated correctly. Similarly, search configurations must be adapted for each country to align with the translated attributes. \

For translating attribute values, the Admin API offers solutions. You can find further details available here.

Translations in the SCAYLE Panel

Now, you’ll need to translate the various attributes for the new international "Fashion Store" into English. Those translations can be managed directly in the SCAYLE Panel by navigating to: Shops ➜ [Shop] ➜ Internationalization ➜ Translations.

Through the use of tabs, select the category you want to edit. SCAYLE allows each shop country to support only one language at a time, yet enables you to manage several shop countries using the same language in parallel. Therefore, once you’ve saved your translations, they’re automatically applied across all existing shops using the same language.

Attribute Groups

Firstly, to configure translations for the attribute groups of our new international store, follow these steps:

Navigate to the Attribute Groups tab.
Select a Target Language from the dropdown menu.
In the Translations section, select to view All, Existing, or Non-existing translations.
Click on Show Translations to display the Attribute Groups and their corresponding translations.
Optionally, to limit the number of attribute groups displayed, specify whether to list Existing or Non-Existing translations.

For additional information, click here.

Simple Attributes

To translate the values of simple attributes, proceed with the following steps:\

Select the Simple Attributes tab.
Select up to 5 Attribute Groups from the dropdown menu.
Select the desired Target Language for translation from the dropdown menu.
Under Translations you can select whether to show All, Existing, or Non existing translations.
Click Show Translations to reveal a list of attributes in both the original and target languages.
A list of attributes will appear with the original and target language. You can then add or update translations for each attribute directly. Changes are saved automatically with each text field modification.

For additional information, click here.

Advanced Attributes

Translating advanced attributes follows a similar process to simple attributes, with translations added individually:

Navigate to the Advanced Attributes tab.
Select up to 5 Attribute Groups from the dropdown menu.
Select the desired Target Language for translation from the dropdown menu.
Select up to 10 Product IDs.
Click on Show Translations.
Click the product to open the associated attributes. You can then add or edit the target language translations. Your changes will be saved automatically.

For each product ID, it will display the original values of the advanced attribute groups for translation. You can input the translations next to these initial values.

For additional information, click here.

Master Categories

To apply translations to Master Categories:

You’ll need to select the Master Categories tab.
Select the desired Target Language for translation from the dropdown menu.
Under Translations, select whether to show All, Existing, or Non existing translations.
Click on Show Translations.
Here, you're able to input translations for each category level. The term requiring translation will be highlighted in bold. As an example, you would start translating hierarchically from "Clothing" to "Women", then "Jackets", and continue downwards.

By default, up to 50 master categories are shown for editing at any one time, but you have the option to expand this view to show 100, 200, or up to a maximum of 500 categories

For additional information, click here.

Import Translations

To facilitate the translation process for your shop page, you can also use the import functionalities available within the SCAYLE Panel. You can find them here: Settings ➜ Imports & Jobs ➜ Imports ➜ Translations

You’ll be able to upload an xlsx file which specifies the translations and target language. The mandatory columns vary depending on the import option:\

Simple or Advanced Attributes:

Attribute Groups:

Master Categories:

For additional information, click here.

Shop Category Translations in the SCAYLE Panel

Besides product data, it’s also important to enhance shop categories and translate them into the language of the respective country’s shop. This can be achieved within the SCAYLE Panel. You have the option to manually translate individual shop categories or apply updates across categories via import.

Manual Translations

Choose the shop country you’d like to translate and open the shop categories. You can manually update each shop category name and translate it to the country locale. The initial shop category names, created at the general shop level, will be displayed by default. There is no need to modify any configurations; simply translate the existing shop categories.

Translations by Import

In case you’d like to perform bulk updates, especially during the initial setup of a new shop category tree, you can use the “update shop categories” import feature. This feature is accessible through Settings ➜ Imports & jobs ➜ Shops.

Here, you’ll need to upload a csv or an xlsx file with the columns shown in the table below:

The shop_country_id refers to the application ID for the respective shop country. You can find the category ID in the panel overview of the shop country categories. Enter the translation directly into the name field, where the category name should be input in the target language. Upon uploading, this action updates and translates the shop category name for that shop country.

Utilize the is_active and is_visible fields to toggle the visibility and activation status of the shop categories within the shop country

Additionally, this required information can be compiled and provided as a report by your designated SCAYLE Account Manager.

Translations for Checkout

Next, you’ll need to take care of the checkout translations for your DK-Store. The checkout frontend translations need to be handled separately, we’ll use Crowdin for this.

This platform allows for precise localization adjustments through linked translations applied to every object, text block, and notification within the checkout flow.

For a detailed guide on how to collect and publish these translations, the Crowdin platform is our tool of choice. For more detailed documentation on this process, please visit our checkout translations documentation here.\

The initial setup and integration of Crowdin with your project will be handled by your SCAYLE Account Manager. Please make sure to contact them for assistance.

Translations with Crowdin

Crowdin has a translations.json file for each language/locale (such as “French, Switzerland”, “German, Switzerland”, “German, Austria”, “Dutch”, “Bulgarian”) located within the “Checkout Folder”. Accessing the translations.json within a specific language folder presents you with strings available for translation.

Translations should be added directly to each relevant string, based on your specific configurations. For example, translations related to a hidden phone number input field may be unnecessary.

Custom Translation Keys

While it's not possible to create new translation keys, Crowdin provides custom translation keys ranging from custom1 to custom10. These keys are designed for personalized translations and are easily located by searching within Crowdin. They offer a flexible option for incorporating customized text into the checkout frontend. Simply insert the desired text in Crowdin corresponding to the relevant key:\

In this example, the “This is a custom Text” is assigned to the key custom7. To display these texts in the Checkout Frontend, adjustments to the Frontend Configurations are necessary. Further details on the various possibilities can be found here.

Release Translations

Once your translations are complete, you must publish the changes to dynamically update the Staging or Production environments through the Checkout APIs. This is done by navigating to the Translations Tab:

If you scroll down, you’ll see this:

Here, you have the option to release the translations for individual environments or globally across all environments at once.\