Translation Overview

Illume's translation tools are an add-on package, the “Translation Module”, designed to work with third-party translation vendors or in-house translators.  The Translation Module streamlines workflow and enables a user to launch a single survey that includes multiple languages. The translation tools require Translation Module Licensing. In addition, the user's Illume administrator must enable the translation feature for each user who will be editing, creating, or managing survey translations. (This is a simple process. See "Enabling Special Features" for details.)

The Translation Process

The basic process of translating an Illume survey involves three steps:

NOTE: It is very important that the survey to be translated is in a finished state.  Much frustration will be caused if changes are made to a survey actively going through the translation process.  The translation process relies on exact text matches to know where translations are to be applied.  If the text of an item in the survey changes between the time a translation package is created and the translation is applied to the survey, that item will not have its translation applied.

1. Create a "translation package". This is a simple point-and-click operation that creates a translation package, which is an XML file containing all of the unique text strings from the Illume survey.
2. Translate the package. Send the XML file to a third party translation service or use Illume's Side-by-Side Translation tool to translate the package text.
3. Import the translated text back into the original survey.

After step 3, the user's survey will contain the original language and the translations. This process may be repeated for as many languages as needed, storing all of the translations in a single survey.

Translation Tools

If a user's Illume license includes the translation module, and a translation-enabled client is used, Illume's Translation tools are accessed through the Translate menu of the DatStat Illume Survey Manager. The Translation tools include:

• The Translation Package Creator - use this to create translation packages (step 1).
• The Translation Editor - use this to translate the text in a translation package (step 2).
• The Translation Manager - use this to add, remove, and update translation packages within the master survey (step 3).