ChannelEngine: product translations

About this article

This article describes ChannelEngine's product translations feature, and how to use it.

Table of contents

Introduction

Request a translation via the web app

FAQs

Introduction

To sell your products across multiple countries, especially products that are less mainstream or not connected to well-known brands, you may have to provide your product information in multiple languages.

ChannelEngine facilitates this process by offering a solid integration with automated translation tools, such as Google Cloud Translate and Deepl.

NB: when using this feature, make sure to select only the source attributes, products, and languages you need before scheduling the translation. While the cost per word/character is quite low, translating two million characters, for instance, does add up. Any translations done via ChannelEngine are billed monthly, and shown in your invoices.

NB: although the quality of automated translation services has improved significantly in the past few years, it is very important to verify their output if possible. This way your customers can make an informed purchase based on reliable titles and descriptions.

Request a translation via the web app

1. On the ChannelEngine dashboard, go to Products, Product translations. If the option is not visible in this menu, it is either not enabled for your account or you do not have the right permissions.
2. The Product translations page shows an overview of all previously created translations. Click Add translation rule.
3. In the Product translation rule dialog box, in the Add translation rule section, enter all the relevant details of the new translation rule:
   • Name - the name of the translation project.
   • Select translation service - the translation service you want to use. The source and destination languages, as well as the cost vary based on the translation service selected.
   • Contains HTML - if any of the attributes for which you are requesting a translation include HTML content, enable this setting.
   • Update existing translations - to retranslate previously translated attributes included in your selection, enable this setting.
   • Select source language - the input language, i.e.: the language you want to translate from. It is key that this is correct, so the translation does not fail.
   • Select destination language - select the output language. Multiple languages can be selected.
   • Level - define the selection of products you want to translate. If you select a channel, all products in it are included. You can also select a specific listing.
   • Fields - the source fields of the selected products you want to use. Product description and title attributes are common options. Both translation services connected with ChannelEngine support HTML.
4. Once all required information is entered, click Calculate translations costs to find out how many characters and products are included in the translation project, as well as what the total cost would be.
5. Once you have checked the calculation and agreed with the selection, click Save to store the translations.
6. The newly created translation rule is now visible in the overview.

   

7. To submit the translation request click Schedule and click Confirm. As the translation APIs have rate limits and it is not always possible to immediately submit a large number of characters for translation, the process is not instantaneous. Once the translation is scheduled, changes are no longer possible, but up to that point you can edit the project by selecting the pencil icon.
   
   Once the translation process begins, its status changes to Running.

   

   
   When the process finishes, its status changes to Completed and the new translations are made available as extra data attributes for products.
8. To verify the translation, go to the channel or listing containing the products you created the translations for. Open a product from this selection and scroll down to the extra data section. There you should see one or more translated attributes added by the translation service (figure 2), based on the input (figure 1).

   Figure 1: the original description field (in Dutch)

   Figure 2: the translated description field (in German)

Retrieve translations via the API

Translations can also be retrieved via the API. They are included as custom fields when calling the GET/v2/products or GET/v2/products/{merchantProductNo} endpoints. You can spot them out by looking for the |CE:[language code] suffix attached to the attribute's name.

E.g.: the response below shows "Key": "NAME|CE:SV" and "Key": "BRAND|CE:SV" for the Swedish (i.e.: SV) translation of the Name and Brand attributes.

	{         "Key": "Verpakking gewicht eenheid",         "Value": "kg",         "Type": "TEXT",         "IsPublic": false       },       {         "Key": "Extra image link 10",         "Value": "https://www.example.be/sites/www.example.be/files/example-braadpannen-example.png",         "Type": "TEXT",         "IsPublic": false       },       {         "Key": "Extra image link 11",         "Value": "https://www.example.be/sites/www.example.be/files/example-braadpannen-example.png",         "Type": "TEXT",         "IsPublic": false       },       {         "Key": "NAME|CE:SV",         "Value": "Example Stekpanna 20cm",         "Type": "TEXT",         "IsPublic": false       },       {         "Key": "BRAND|CE:SV",         "Value": "ExamplePan",         "Type": "TEXT",         "IsPublic": false       }, 

FAQs

What happens when an already translated product selection is updated?

Previously translated selections are not automatically retranslated following an update to their attributes. ChannelEngine's translation service also skips selections that had already been translated, even when you request their retranslation. This is done so you are not charged multiple times for the same translation. To change that behavior, enable the setting Update existing translations.