Help - Text - Browse

JTLanguage help browser.

Adding or Editing Lesson Translations

Introduction

This help page provides information on editing existing courses to add or correct translations.

This can be done both for courses you've created yourself, or for courses created by others, if allowed. For the latter, please use extreme care to only add or edit translations, and not significantly alter the structure or content of the existing lesson. Note that you won't normally see other language translations in lesson content, unless you've set up those languages in your profile or the course/lesson/content language options. If you do want to make other changes, please work with the course's/lesson's owner on this.

Adding a Language

If the course doesn't list the language in its "Target Languages" or "Host Languages" field in the course information pane, you'll need to add it to the course profile. Note that if the course language is "All Languages", you don't need to add the language, as it is already implicilty included.

To add a language:

1. Navigate to the main page of the course.
2. Click the "Edit Course Profile" link in the Course Information Pane.
3. In the "Target Languages" section of the form page that appears, the last drop-down menu will prompt: "(add language here)" Click the drop-down menu and select the new language. (If your target language doesn't appear in the list, you'll need to add it to JTLanguage's list of languages. Please visit the Teacher->Languages page for this.)
4. If the course is symmetrical (a host language can be a target language and visa-versa), add the language to the "Host Languages" section also.
5. This is important: Check the "Propagate languages" checkbox. This will cause the language to be added to all the groups, lessons, and study lists in the course.
6. Click the "Save" button to save the changes.

After doing this, you can visit the individual course, group, lesson, or content pages to add the item translations. Or, as a starting point, you could use the automated transation mechanism, described later.

Manually Adding Translations - Titles and Descriptions

To enter or edit item translations by hand individually, you basically use the normal editing mechanisms. For courses, groups, or lessons, do the following:

1. Navigate to the main page of the course, group, or lesson desired. Do this via the tree view, or the main pages of nodes higher in the hierarchy.
2. In the "Course/Group/Lesson Information" pane, click the "Edit Course/Group/Lesson Profile" link.
3. The profile edit page appears.
4. The labeled "Title" and "Description" sections will contain one or more text edit boxes for the host languages, with labels directly above and to the right showing the language for each text edit box. If the language you want to translate the title or description to is not a host language, click the "Show title and description target languages" link.
5. Add your translations, or fix existing translations in the appropriate text edit boxes.
6. Click "Save" to save the changes.

To enter or edit titles and descriptions of Study Lists, only the navigation to the profile page is different:

1. Navigate to the study list page.
2. Click the "Edit" link at the bottom of the main pane.
3. One of five editing pages appear. We want the "Edit Profile" page.
4. In the "Select Display" drop-down menu field select "Edit Profile", if not already selected.
5. The content profile edit page appears.
6. Enter your translations or fixes in the appropriate Title or Description text edit boxes.
7. Click "Save" to save any edits you make, or click "Cancel" to discard and unsaved changes.

An alternative means of getting to the edit pages is to navigate to the course, group, or lessons main page, and in the "Content" field list, click the button with the "Edit" prompt for the content you wish to edit.

Manually Adding Translations - Study Items

To enter or edit translations by hand individually for the study items in a study list, you navigate to the study list edit page and make your changes there:

1. Navigate to the study list page.
2. Click the "Edit" link at the bottom of the main pane.
3. One of five editing pages appear. We want the "Edit Text" page.
4. In the "Select Display" drop-down menu field select "Edit Text", if not already selected.
5. The study list text edit page appears.
6. Note that if you want to edit languages that are not selected in your current profile, you can change the languages displayed via the "Target Language" and "Host Language" drop-down menus in the "Content Options" pane. If the "Content Options" pane is not displayed, click the "Show content options" link at the botom of the main pane to unhide it.
7. To edit individual items, click the button with the "Edit" prompt for the item.
8. An edit pane for the item will open up.
9. Add or edit the translation in the text edit box with the appropriate language label.
10. Click "Save" to save any edits you make, or click "Cancel" to discard and unsaved changes.

You can also edit multiple study items at once, including selecting individual languages, or certain collections of languages (i.e. target, host, or both), or all languages (specified for the study list). To do this, do the following, starting with having the "Edit Text" view displayed:

• Navigate to the "Edit Text" display of the study list (described above).
• Check the items you want to edit. You can use the "Select All", "Select None", or "Select Between" buttons for convenience. (The "Select Between" button is a convenience for selecting groups of items. Basically you check the starting and ending item, then click "Select Between". The items between the checked items will be checked. You can check more than two starting and ending items to select multiple groups of items.)
• In the "Edit Language" Pane, click the drop-down menu to select the language or language group you want to edit.
• In the "Edit Language" Pane, click the button with the "Edit language" prompt.
• Edit panes for the checked items will open up.
• Add or edit the translations in the text edit boxes as needed.
• Click "Save" to save any edits you make, or click "Cancel" to discard and unsaved changes.

Note that for speaker names in Text or Transcript content items, the process is similar edit individual, or groups of speaker names. In the "Select Display" drop down menu, select "Edit Speaker Names" instead of "Edit Text".

Updating or Adding Audio

Note that if you edit language items in study lists, an edit will cause any audio media item associate with the study item to be deleted, with the assumption that it needs to be replaced after an edit.

To add back audio media using the automated text-to-speech mechanism, select the study items needing audio via the checkboxes, and then use the controls in the "Speech Synthesis" pane on the study list edit page.

To add back audio media using the built-in audio recording mechanism, click the button with the "Record audio" prompt on individual study items in the study list edit page.

To add back audio media using audio files you recorded separately, click the button with the "Add media" prompt on individual study items in the study list edit page.

Note that if the audio items are references to a media item content, you would need to edit or add the media item, and re-map the text to the audio.

Describing the use of the recording and mapping pages is beyond the scope of this page. I plan to add additional help pages for this shortlyh.

Using Automated Translation - Introduction

As a starting point, you can use the automated translation mechanism. This mechanism is based on the Google Translate API. Howeve, the resulting translations might not be corrent or ideal. After doing automated translation, you'll probably need to go back and review and fix any errors manually.

Using Automated Translation - Entire Course, Group, or Lesson

To add automated translations to an entire Course, Group, or Lesson, you can do the following:

1. Make sure your current JTLanguage profile contains the language you are translation to, either as a Host or Target language in the Home->Languages page. Note that you can create multiple profiles for different language combinations.
2. Navigate to the main page of the course, group, or lesson.
3. Click the "Edit course/group/lesson content" link in the "Content" field set.
4. An "Edit Content" page will appear.
5. In the "Content Edit" pane, click the button, which has the prompt: "Add missing translations"
6. The "Add Missing Node Translations" page will appear.
7. In the "Translate target languages" field, select the language or symbolic language placeholder.
8. In the "Content Select" field set, click or un-click content types as needed. The checked content types will be translated.
9. In the "Translate Options" field set, click or un-click options as desired. You probably want to click both the "Translate titles and descriptions" and "Translate in background" checkboxes. The latter causes the page to be redisplayed, with a status pane that updates every second to show you an indication of the progress.
10. Click the "Translate" button to begin the translations.

Note that the translation mechanism will choose one of the existing languages as the base language to translate from.

Note that only items that are empty for the target translation language (or languages) will be translated. To retranslate something, the item will have to be cleared of that language first.

Note that the underlying Google translation mechanism costs me money ($20 US per million characters). Please use it sparingly and consider donating.

Note that a caching mechanism is used to reuse translations of the same exact item.

Using Automated Translation - Titles and Descriptions

To translate titles and descriptions in course, group, or lesson items using the automated translation mechanism, you can do the following:

1. Make sure your current JTLanguage profile contains the language you are translation to, either as a Host or Target language in the Home->Languages page. Note that you can create multiple profiles for different language combinations.
2. Navigate to the main page of the course, group, or lesson.
3. Click the "Edit course/group/lesson profile" link in the Course/Group/Lesson Information pane.
4. A "Course/Group/Lesson" profile page will appear.
5. Click the "Translate" button to do the translation.
6. The missing translations will be filled in.
7. Edit any mistakes in the automated translation.

Note that only empty title or description language fields will be translated. To retranslate a title or description, clear the target fields in the profile edit page.

To translate titles and descriptions of content items, the process is slightly different in terms of getting to the content profile edit page.

For study lists, navigate to the study list page, click the "Edit" link at the bottom of the page, and in the "Select Display" drop-down menu field, select "Edit Profile".

For media items, go to the "Edit content" page for the lesson, click the button with the "Edit Profile" prompt.

Using Automated Translation - Study Lists

To translate individual study items in a study list, or individual speaker names, you can do the following:

1. Make sure your current JTLanguage profile contains the language you are translation to, either as a Host or Target language in the Home->Languages page. Note that you can create multiple profiles for different language combinations.
2. Navigate to the study list page.
3. Click the "Edit" link at the bottom of the page.
4. A "Edit" page page will appear.
5. In the "Select Display" drop-down menu field select either "Edit Text" or "Edit Speaker Names", if not already selected.
6. The specific edit page appears.
7. To translate individual items, click the button with the "Edit" prompt for the item.
8. An edit pane for the item will open up.
9. Click the "Translate" button to do the translation of missing items. The missing translations are filled in.
10. The edit pane remains open so you can edit the tranlation.
11. Click "Save" to save any edits you make, or click "Cancel" to use the translation as-is.

To translate groups of study items in a study list, or the speaker names, you can do the following:

1. Make sure your current JTLanguage profile contains the language you are translation to, either as a Host or Target language in the Home->Languages page. Note that you can create multiple profiles for different language combinations.
2. Navigate to the study list page.
3. Click the "Edit" link at the bottom of the page.
4. A "Edit" page page will appear.
5. In the "Select Display" drop-down menu field select either "Edit Text" or "Edit Speaker Names", if not already selected.
6. The specific edit page appears.
7. Note that if you want to edit languages that are not selected in your current profile, you can change the languages displayed via the "Target Language" and "Host Language" drop-down menus in the "Content Options" pane. If the "Content Options" pane is not displayed, click the "Show content options" link at the botom of the main pane to unhide it.
8. Check the items you want to translate. You can use the "Select All", "Select None", or "Select Between" buttons for convenience.
9. In the "Edit Language" pane, click the button, which has the prompt: "Add translations"
10. The missing translations are filled in.
11. You can edit individual items, to fix the translations, or use the "Edit language" button to edit all the items for a language.

Note that only empty language items will be translated. To retranslate an item, edit it and clear it. To clear all the items for a language, the "Edit Language" pane has a button, which has the prompt "Clear language". First, be sure to set the language you want to clear in the "Edit Language" pane.

If translations are changed, if there were any audio files, these were probably deleted. You'll need to regenerate or re-record them.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this will be enough to get you started. Otherwise let me know or add to this page yourself.

Again, please be careful and considerate when editing other people's stuff. I can block offenders.

Course owners: Please keep backups of your courses. You can use the "Export" link on the main course page for this. Update your backups if people have made changes you accept. Restore prior backups with the "Import" link.

Help menu Back