Interface functionality: editing or translating Adlib interface texts

Interface functionality: editing or translating interface texts

In the Translations manager you'll see an application objects text table (the overview), and a statistics window pane on the right that indicates the number of opened files and texts, and the amount of translations that are still missing for every language.
The overview has the following columns:

•	The first column displays a temporary number that a single piece of text and its translation has been given in this overview. The default sorting that it implies is based on the Source file column first and secondly on the Tag column.

•	The Type column explains the type of texts this line holds, so for instance if it is a screen field label or an enumeration text, or a system text, etc.

•	The Tag column displays either the line number of a system text, a field tag if the text belongs to a field, or a name, a hyphen or two question marks if the item has no number or tag.

•	The Path column displays the file name from which the texts in that line have been extracted.

•	The remaining columns display the possible translations of the same text. In the Columns menu you can select which language columns to display.

You can sort on each of these columns by clicking the desired column header once; click again if you want to reverse the sorting order of that column.

Editing and/or translating a single text

Just click any text in one of the language columns and type or delete text in it. Click a cell three times to be able to insert or delete text, character by character.

From the Tools menu, you can start three sub tools: Copy columns, Translation tooland Initial capitalsto ease repetitive translations. The Translation tool can also be started from the toolbar:

And just like in other Windows software you can cut, copy and paste selected texts (only single texts): see the options in the Edit menu.

There's also the option to edit or translate these application texts outside of Axiell Designer, which may come in handy when you're outsourcing this work. For this, use the Export to file function in the File menu to export the texts; afterwards, you can import the edited file back into the application, using File > Import from file.

Find or search-and-replace words

You can search for certain words or partial words in the overview. Open the Find and Replace window on the Find tab, either by choosing Edit > Find, by pressing Ctrl+F, or by clicking the Find button:

Type any term or part thereof, that you want to search for. If the term you type is only part of a word you look for (or can be part of a word), then deselect the Match words option. If you mark this option, the search term must appear as a whole word in a text consisting of one or more words.
Mark the Ignore case option if upper and lower case are not important while searching.
Then also select the desired Search in columns in which you actually want to search.

Click the Find button to start the search. A found term is indicated by a short black arrow to the left of a text number and the term itself is selected. To look for the next appearance of the searched term, click the Find next button (or press F3 when you've closed the window) and repeat this if desired.

On the Replace tab you may extend your search to replacing any found words or parts thereof. Simply enter the word or part of a word to replace a found term with, in the Replace with entry field.
Click Find (next) repeatedly until you find an occurrence of the searched term you want to replace, and then click the Replace button. Repeat this procedure until all texts have been searched.
You may also skip finding next occurrences and click Replace all directly from the start: this finds and replaces all occurrences of the searched term automatically. You cannot confirm replacements, so only use this function if you are absolutely sure that the searched word appears only in texts which you'd like to change.

Search and replace texts semi-automatically

Select a text of which you like to create a translation and start the Translation tool by choosing Tools > Translation tool in the Translations manager.

The currently selected text is displayed in the Source field accompanied by its translation language. If you want, you can type a different term or click Next to proceed to the next text in the column from which you selected the first text (or click Previous to go back to the previous term). If possible, select an existing text from the drop-down list which opens as soon as you start typing: this will automatically select any existing translation as well.
If you need to reverse the Source and Target options here, just click the button with the two rotating arrows.
The Target field must contain the translation you wish to add. Select the target language and type the new translation, if not present yet. If you'd like the new translation to be added only in empty cells of the target language (in the appropriate rows of course), then mark the Empty texts only checkbox; if the new translation must replace any old translations in the target language as well as be added to empty cells, leave the checkbox deselected.

In the Translation list you see all texts that have the selected source text in them, e.g. "title" appears also in "Source title" and "By title". You also see how many times a text occurs.

As soon as you've entered a Source and Target text, the first occurrence of the source text will be selected in the Translations manager. Click the Translate button to replace only this occurrence of the text, after which the next occurrence of the source text will be selected. Or click Translate all to replace all occurrences of this text at once: only use this option if you are absolutely sure that the target translation will always be the right one.

Copy the texts of an entire language column

Use the Copy columns tool to copy all texts from a language column to another language column. When adding a translation in a new language it may ease the translating job if you first copy the texts from another column into the new one, for instance because in the new translation many texts will remain in English; then you don't have to enter these texts all over again manually.

Start this tool by choosing Tools > Copy columns in the Translations manager. In the tool window, select from and to which language you want to do the copying (both languages have to be visible in the Translations manager already), and if you do not want the copy process to overwrite texts already present in the Destination column, then also mark the Copy only if destination is empty checkbox. (The Copy selected rows only option is not functional yet.) Click OK to start the copying.

Convert the first character of selected text types to capitals

The Set initial capitals tool is a simple way to automatically ensure that all texts of specific types start with a capital.

Start this tool by choosing Tools > Initial capitals in the Translations manager. In the tool window, just select all desired text types to apply this conversion to, and under Language columns to modify, select one specific language, or all languages at once, to which the changes should apply, and then click OK.
Note that this conversion is executed once when you use this tool, but after the conversion it's up to you again: you can enter new texts or edit converted texts, and have them started without initial capital.

Translating texts outside of Axiell Designer

If you'd like to outsource translation work of Collections application texts to someone who doesn't have a license for Axiell Designer, you'll need to export these texts to a file which can be edited in a regular text editor.
From Axiell Designer 7.1.13323.1, this functionality is available and can be found in the File menu of the Translations manager: Export to file and Import from file. More specifically it allows you to:

•	export the currently loaded application texts in selected interface languages to an XML file;

•	import an earlier exported and edited XML file into the currently loaded files and overwrite or insert one or more (newly) selected languages in the process.

The advantage here is that a single XML file containing all application texts to be edited or translated to a new interface language, can easily and safely be exchanged between your company and an external translator, because the translator no longer needs to have access to the application structure files. The translator can do his or her work by simply editing the XML file itself in a text editor. The resulting file can be sent back, after which you can import it into the actual application to update the relevant texts.

Let’s use an example to clarify things:

Click File > Export to file to open the Export translations window. Select the languages of the application translations you wish to export (for the translator to translate) and include the language(s) into which a new translation must now be made. Let’s use German for example. (English will always be exported, whether you mark the checkbox or not, and is used to match new translations to the correct application objects when importing the edited XML file later on.) Exporting means that the application texts in the selected languages will be copied to a special XML file: as of yet, nothing will be changed in the original Collections application files from which the texts are exported.
Then click the … button behind the Export to file entry field, to select a folder and enter a file name for the XML file to be generated.
Click OK to start the export.

Look up the generated XML file on your system and double-click it to open it. It will be structured like the example below. Note that because we’ve included the language still to be translated, empty XML tags for this language (German in this example) are present in the XML file, making it easy for the translator to insert the new texts.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

…

<text>

<English>Access</English>

<Dutch>Toegankelijkheid</Dutch>

<French>Restrictions d'accès</French>

</text>

<text>

<English>Access conditions</English>

<Dutch>Raadpleging</Dutch>

<French>Conditions d'accès</French>

</text>

<text>

<English>access_category.notes</English>

<Dutch>toegangscategorie.opmerkingen</Dutch>

<French>conditions_d_accès.notes</French>

</text>

<text>

<English>Accession</English>

<Dutch>Inschrijving</Dutch>

<French>Inscription</French>

</text>

<text>

<English>Accession analysis</English>

<Dutch>Inschrijvingsanalyse</Dutch>

<French>Analyse d'inscription</French>

</text>

…

</AdlibTranslations>

3.	After editing/translating the file in an appropriate text editor like Notepad++ or MS Visual Studio, the translator should return the file. (Note that the English texts must not be edited in any way.) For example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

…

<text>

<English>Access</English>

<Dutch>Toegankelijkheid</Dutch>

<German>Zugriff</German>

<French>Restrictions d'accès</French>

</text>

<text>

<English>Access conditions</English>

<Dutch>Raadpleging</Dutch>

<German>Zugangsbestimmungen</German>

<French>Conditions d'accès</French>

</text>

<text>

<English>access_category.notes</English>

<Dutch>toegangscategorie.opmerkingen</Dutch>

<German>Zugangsbestimmungen.Bemerkungen</German>

<French>conditions_d_accès.notes</French>

</text>

<text>

<English>Accession</English>

<Dutch>Inschrijving</Dutch>

<German>Zugang</German>

<French>Inscription</French>

</text>

<text>

<English>Accession analysis</English>

<Dutch>Inschrijvingsanalyse</Dutch>

<German>Zugangsanalyse</German>

<French>Analyse d'inscription</French>

</text>

…

</AdlibTranslations>

Open your application folder in Designer again and in the Translations manager load all the application texts that you originally loaded for export. Only the actually loaded texts will be updated, by means of the match between the English translation in the loaded texts and the English translation in the imported file.

Click File > Import from file to open the Import translations window. Now mark only the language(s) of the translation(s) with which you want to update your application files. The texts in the selected languages will be overwritten by the relevant texts from the XML file; the other present translations in the application files will remain unchanged. In our example you would only mark German. Click OK to import the new translations. In the Translations manager you can now check that the new translations have been added correctly.

6.	Remember to save all affected application files before you close Designer.