New Feature: Copywriting

Many of our users repeatedly asked for it, so we decided to implement a new feature: it’s now possible to edit the source text (in the source language, thus) directly in the translation interface.

Thanks to this new feature, there’s no need anymore for your client or marketing team to come up with all the final text for the website before you can start developing it. Now you can simply define "placeholder" texts in your application using YAML keys and then let your client or marketing team “copywrite” the final text directly in the Translation.io interface.

This feature can even be used as a kind of minimalist CMS for your client.

Once the source text has been edited in the interface, it will be inserted directly in your application the next time you execute rake translation:sync. And don’t worry about conflicts, we’re taking care of that for you!

Please note that this feature can only be used with YAML keys as we can’t make any change to the GetText calls in your source code. Make sure to use YAML keys if you want your client to be able to edit the text.

GitHub Login with Translation.io

We recently added the possibility for users to sign up and sign in to Translation.io with their GitHub accounts.

GitHub has become the most popular code sharing tool among the Ruby and Rails communities. So we figured... if you're working with Rails, you most probably have a GitHub account! Now you can simply sign up via GitHub to save the hassle of having to enter your password.

But... what if you created your account before the introduction of this feature? Don't worry, you can still use the GitHub button to sign in as long as you use the same email address for both your Translation.io and GitHub accounts.

And what if you first signed in with GitHub, but now you'd like to also sign in with your email address and password? Well, we got you covered: simply make sure to first sign out, then use the forgot your password? link to set a new password.

Translation.io Goes Live

After a 2-month private beta and a 2-month public beta, we are proud to announce that Translation.io is now officially launched (as of January 2015).

We warmly thank all the beta testers for their useful feedback: it really helped us improve our tool! Thanks to you all.

A few figures about the last few months:

• 115 carefully targeted users
• 71 projects
• 124,106 segments synced (61,082 GetText, 63,024 YAML)
• 65,050 segments translated
• 7 versions of the 'translation' gem
• 44 different target languages

We're glad to see that our project met a positive and enthusiastic welcome in the small community of developers around us. We will now start spreading the word and presenting our tool more largely in the Ruby on Rails community.

But we won't stop at that! We will continue developing the tool to improve the interface while making sure that it remains simple and user-friendly.

Stay tuned for the next updates!

Keyboard Shortcuts for Translators

If you have ever watched a professional translator work with his/her favorite translation software, surely you will have been impressed by the speed with which he/she jumps from one segment to another when translating. Sometimes you may have seen partial translations of segments suddenly appear on the screen, for the translator to adapt them to the context. You may even have seen segments get fully translated in a split second.

Amanzingly, while his/her translation work was progressing at a rapid pace, you noticed that the translator never reached for the mouse or trackpad...

As in many other computer-aided professions, translators make intensive use of several keyboard shortcuts to speed up their work and, consequently, increase their profitability. Developers who use VI, Emacs or Sublime Text won't deny the importance of keyboard shortcuts in their everyday (work) lives.

That's why we paid a special attention to keyboard shortcuts in our translation interface, so as to make the translators' lives easier and spare them from having to reach for the mouse. Here are the different, useful shortcuts:

You'll notice that CTRL + , CTRL + and TAB are undoubtedly the most important shortcuts, but don't underestimate the importance of the translation memory using CTRL + NUMBER.

If you can't remember one of the shortcuts while you are translating, just click on this icon.

We hope that these keyboard shortcuts will help you work faster and with less pain.

Ruby, Pirates and Rhum at ArrrrCamp 2014

Ahoy mateys,

As planned, our team went to ArrrrCamp 2014 in Ghent for the opening of Translation.io's public beta.

One thing we did not mention, though, is that we were their main sponsor... unintentionally! Indeed, no one else opted for the same level of sponsorship as we did, and we thus became their biggest sponsor. Some of the participants may have thought that we were largely financing the conference.

The organizers graciously gave us the opportunity to present our product during a 5-minute lightning talk scheduled right before one of the wonderful presentations. As stressful as it may be, we were delighted to be able to pitch Translation.io to all 250 participants at once!

Here are the slides we had prepared:

The organizers had also arranged a place for us to display our flyers, roll-up banners, and all our branded gift mugs. Some people seemed interested by our product and very quickly understood the benefit of using GetText (for those who were still to convince).

Full Disclosure

The conversation rate from our presence at ArrrrCamp was not as successful as we had hoped, with only a few new registrations, but we suppose that few developers actually had an urgent need to translate an application right at that moment. Since the feedback we received was very positive, we hope the participants will remember our product when they'll be in need of an efficient way to translate an application.

Ultimately, we believe we have gained "karma" among the community, so we have that going for us, which is nice. What's more, providing support to a conference as cool and fun as ArrrrCamp is already a success in itself. Now we'll have to get back to work on our web marketing strategy. Though not as fun as meeting people at conferences, it's actually a more effective way to reach future beta testers and clients with a much more satisfying conversion rate.