What’s New at Crowdin: September 2021

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What’s New at Crowdin: September 2021 Roundup

Take a look at what Crowdin has been up to this month. We rolled out the Iterable, FunTranslation, and ReversoContext apps, updated design plugins, added a task filter to the cost estimate reports and improved a number of API methods.

In this article, you can also read more about new options to manage notifications for translators and project managers, a way to list strings from a specific branch, updated API clients, and more. Let’s jump into it.

Machine Translation Engines

Custom MT Engines Custom MT Engines

You can use machine translation to speed up the translation process. Among the machine engines that Crowdin already supports, you can find Microsoft Translator, Google Translate, Amazon Translate, DeepL Translator, and more.

Didn’t find the engine you need? Custom MT is the way to use a translation engine not yet available in Crowdin.

First, you’ll need to make an application that will interact with Crowdin and your machine translation engine. Read more about Crowdin apps and creating an OAuth app. Remember to include “custom-mt” module to your app manifest.

"modules": {
        "custom-mt": [{
            "key": "custom-mt",
            "name": "Custom mt",
            "icon": "/logo.png",
            "description": "",
            "logo": "/assets/img/logo.png",
            "url": "/"
        }]
  }

Then, you can install it into your organization manually through manifest.json. For this, go to Account Settings > Crowdin Applications > click Manually install. Following that, you can use your machine engine in the Crowdin localization project.

Custom MT Engines

You can also connect apps from the Crowdin Store. For this, you only need to install the app and go to Resources > Machine Engines > scroll to Custom MT. You can see all installed apps in the drop-down menu.

Custom MT Engines

If you want to make your app available for other Crowdin users, we can add it to the marketplace. If you are interested, contact us.

DeepL Translator DeepL Translator

DeepL machine translation engine released a new feature that sets whether the translated text should lean towards formal or informal language. You can manage this feature in Crowdin and choose default, formal, or informal tone. For this, go to Resources > Machine Translation > DeepL Translator.

View all Machine Translation engines available in Crowdin.

DeepL Translator

Generate Cost Estimate Report per Task

Calculate how much will be spent on each task. Generate the Cost Estimate report based on files assigned in a task. You can calculate the price and create a report for one particular task (translation or proofreading). To generate this report, go to Project page > Reports > Cost Estimate > choose Task filter.

Generate Cost Estimate Report per Task

Search Strings using Verbal Expressions

In Advanced Filter, you can configure your own filtering and sorting parameters. For instance, you can search for strings that begin with capital letters and have no dots at the end or contains ‘‘HTTP’’. For this, you need to go to the Crowdin Online Editor > Advanced Filter and type down a verbal expression. Thus, you can find all strings that match the specified criteria.

Search Strings using Verbal Expressions

Crowdin Marketplace

Iterable App Iterable App

With our new Crowdin Iterable app, you can sync your marketing content for translation from your Iterable account to your Crowdin project.

This app allows you to localize:

  • Emails
  • Push notifications
  • In-app texts
  • SMS templates

Once your localization team completes their work in Crowdin, you can synchronize translations back to Iterable in a few clicks. Localized content will be available in Iterable so that you can run your multilingual marketing campaigns.

Make sure you add the correct language codes to your Iterable project to ensure that the translations are synchronized correctly. For this, go to Project Settings > scroll down to the Locales section. Learn more about the Iterable app.

FunTranslations app FunTranslations app

What if you could give your app or website the voice of Yoda, Shakespeare, or a pirate? Actually, you can. Translate from English to different dialects and languages from movies, TV shows, and games right in Crowdin. For this, you need to install the Fun Translation app. Then, you go to Resources > Machine Translation > Custom MT > choose FunTranslation. Translation suggestions made by this app will be visible in the Crowdin Editor in the TM and MT suggestions section.

FunTranslations app

This connector supports three Crowdin languages (Klingon, Quenya, and Pirate English). To use the rest of the languages provided by Fun Translation, you should create custom languages in Crowdin.

Learn more about the Fun Translations app.

Reverso Context app Reverso Context app

Crowdin integration with Reverso allows you to search for translations in context right from the Translation Editor. Reverso Context is an online and mobile application combining big data from large multilingual repositories. The product mainly uses texts from movies, books, government documents and allows users to search for translations in context. You can find idiomatic usages of translations, synonyms, and voice output.

Learn more about the Reverso Context app.

Reverso Context app

JSproxy app JSproxy app

You can customize the “Switch language” button after you translate your website using the JSproxy app. You can choose where the button will display (bottom-right, top-right, bottom-left, top-left) and customize its CSS style. As a result, you can control text colors, fonts, sizes, and more. You can find more details in the Help section after you install the app.

JSproxy app

Design Plugins

In September, we released Adobe XD plugin 1.5.0 with several new features. Now you can:

  • preview translations on source artboards without creating copies
  • update texts linked to strings changed in Crowdin
  • preview string keys (on duplicate artboards)

Also, we improved the strings’ selection feature. Instead of selecting each text element individually, you can select one or more artboards and the Adobe XD plugin will select all strings, and you can push them to your Crowdin project.

The same functionality can also be found in Figma (recently updated to Version 27) and Sketch plugins.

Design Plugins

API v2

List strings

If you need to list strings from a specific branch, add the branchId parameter to the List Strings method.

Configure more Project Settings when Creating a Project

It is now possible to allow:

  • proofreaders work with the hidden strings
  • project members to manage glossary terms

View more about Add Project API method.

Notifications

Configure notification settings when creating or editing a project with the Add Project and Edit Project methods. You can choose to notify project managers about new strings and language translation/validation completion. You can choose to notify translators about new strings as well.

See API 2.0 documentation for Crowdin and Crowdin Enterprise.

API Clients

We released new versions of the following API clients:

Obligatory Email Verification for Managers

You can’t invite managers or other project members (translators, proofreaders) if you have an unverified email address on Crowdin. Remember to confirm your email if you haven’t yet done so. Verify your email address in Account Settings > Profile > Email. You can check which email address is listed in the settings and resend confirmation if necessary.

Localization at Wrike and Key Localization Success Metrics

Sharing experiences and information between people from the industry is one of the best ways to gain knowledge.

If you want to know why automated workflows and new technologies are the future of localization, read our interview with Ivan Pugin, Localization Team Lead at Wrike.

You can also learn 3 key localization metrics that can help you plan your localization strategy. Discover thoughts of Ilenia Bellucci, Anna Iokhimovich, and Camila Pedraza to understand the value of localization better. Read the Crowdin quick take article.

Crowdin Enterprise

Linguistic Quality Assurance (LQA) app Linguistic Quality Assurance (LQA) app

With a new update, you can choose between types of linguistic quality assurance. There are rating (when proofreaders can rate translations from 1 to 5 stars) and models (TAUS DQF-MQM, LISA, and SAE J2450). Also, we added the ability to track the time proofreaders spend on strings. This feature is helpful If you choose to pay per hour instead of by word count. You can find the tracked time in the LQA report.

View more about the Linguistic Quality Assurance (LQA) app.

Pre-translation with Fuzzy Matches

You can run TM pre-translate that will use fuzzy matches. You can specify the minimum match ratio (starting from 40%). If there are a couple of translations with a different similarity match, the system will choose the strings with the highest match.

Fuzzy Matches

View Last Build Time

Up until now, admins could see the built time only via API v2. Now they can view the last built time by simply hovering over the Download button. Previously, this option was available for proofreaders only.

New Month, New Updates

You can check out the latest releases at our Release Notes page and share your ideas on the features you wish to have on the Crowdin Feature Request page. That’s it for now. Check back next month for more updates from Crowdin.

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Diana Voroniak