Configure Translation Rules

Learn how to define translation rules to identify content for translation.

The Story So Far

In the previous document of the AEM Sites translation journey, Configure translation connector you learned how to install and configure your translation connector and should now:

• Understand the important parameters of the Translation Integration Framework in AEM.
• Be able to set up your own connection to your translation service.

Now that your connector is set up, this article takes you through the next step of identifying what content you need to translate.

Objective

This document helps you understand how to use AEM’s translation rules to identify your translation content. After reading this document, you should:

• Understand what the translation rules do.
• Be able to define your own translation rules.

Translation Rules

AEM Sites pages can contain much information. Depending on your project needs, it is likely that not all the information within a page must to be translated.

Translation rules identify the content that is included in, or excluded from, translation projects. When content is translated, AEM extracts or harvests the content based on these rules. In this way only content that must be translated is sent to the translation service.

Translation rules include the following information:

• The path of the content to which the rule applies
  • The rule also applies to the descendants of the content
• The names of the properties that contain the content to translate
  • The property can be specific to a specific resource type or to all resource types

AEM automatically creates translation rules for sites pages, but because each project’s requirements are different, it is important that you know how to review and adapt the rules as required to your project.

Creating Translation Rules

Multiple rules can be created to support complex translation requirements. For example, one project you may be working on requires all page information to be translated, but on another page only descriptions must be translated while titles are left untranslated.

Translation rules are designed to handle such scenarios. However in this example we illustrate how to create rules by focusing on a simple, single configuration.

There is a Translation Configuration console available for configuring translation rules.

To access it:

1. Navigate to Tools > General.
2. Select Translation Configuration.

AEM automatically creates translation rules for all content. To view these rules:

1. Select the /content context.

2. On the toolbar, select the Edit.

3. The Translation Rules Editor opens with the rules that AEM automatically created for the /content path.

   

4. Page properties that are translated are located under the General section of the list. You can add or update an existing property names that you want to explicitly include in translation.

   1. In the New Property field, enter the property name. The options Translate and Inherit are checked automatically.
   2. Select Add.
   3. Repeat these steps for all the fields that you must translate.
   4. Select Save.

You have now configured your translation rules.

Advanced Usage

There are several additional properties that can be configured as part of your translation rules. In addition, you can specify your rules by hand as XML, which allows for more specificity and flexibility.

Such features are generally not needed to get started localizing your content, but you can read about them further in the Additional Resources section if you are interested.

What’s Next

Now that you have completed this part of the AEM Sites translation journey you should:

• Understand what the translation rules do.
• Be able to define your own translation rules.

Build on this knowledge and continue your AEM Sites translation journey by next reviewing the document Translate content where you learn how your connector and rules work together to translate content.

Additional Resources

While it is recommended that you move on to the next part of the translation journey by reviewing the document Translate content, the following are some additional, optional resources that do a deeper dive on some concepts mentioned in this document, but they are not required to continue on the journey.

• Identifying Content to Translate - Learn how translation rules identify content that needs translating.