Get Started with AEM Headless Translation

Last update: April 11, 2024

CREATED FOR:

  • Admin
  • Developer
  • User
  • Leader

Get to know how to organize your headless content and how AEM’s translation tools work.

The Story So Far

In the previous document of the AEM headless translation journey, Learn about headless content and how to translate in AEM you learned the basic theory of what a headless CMS is and you should now:

  • Understand the basic concepts of headless content delivery.
  • Be familiar with how AEM supports headless and translation.

This article builds on those fundamentals so you understand how AEM stores and manages headless content and how you can use AEM’s translation tools to translate that content.

Objective

This document helps you understand how to get started translating headless content in AEM. After reading you should:

  • Understand the importance of content structure to translation.
  • Understand how AEM stores headless content.
  • Be familiar with AEM’s translation tools.

Requirements and Prerequisites

There are several requirements before you begin translating your headless AEM content.

Knowledge

  • Experience translating content in a CMS
  • Experience using the basic features of a large-scale CMS
  • Have a working knowledge of AEM basic handling
  • Understanding of the translation service you are using
  • Have a basic understanding of the content you are translating
TIP
If you are not familiar with using a large-scale CMS like AEM, consider reviewing the Basic Handling documentation before proceeding. The Basic Handling documentation is not part of the journey, so return to this page when complete.

Tools

  • Sandbox access for testing translating your content
  • Credentials to connect to your preferred translation service
  • Be a member of the projects-administrators group in AEM

Structure is Key

AEM’s content, be it headless or traditional web pages, is driven by its structure. AEM imposes few requirements on the content structure, but careful consideration of your content hierarchy as part of the project planning can make translation much simpler.

TIP
Plan for translation at the very beginning of the headless project. Work closely with the project manager and content architects early.
An Internationalization Project Manager may be required as a separate persona whose responsibility it is to define what content should be translated and what not, and what translated content may be modified by regional or local content producers.

How AEM Stores Headless Content

For the translation specialist, it is not important to understand in-depth how AEM manages headless content. However being familiar with the basic concepts and terminology will be helpful as you later use AEM’s translation tools. Most importantly you need to understand your own content and how it is structured to effectively translate it.

Content Models

In order for headless content to be delivered consistently across channels, regions, and languages, content must be highly structured. AEM uses Content Models to enforce this structure. Think of Content Models as a kind of template or pattern for creating headless content. Because every project has its own needs, every project defines its own Content Fragment Models. AEM has no fixed requirements or structure for such models.

The content architect works early in the project to define this structure. As the translation specialist, you should work closely with the content architect to understand and organize the content.

NOTE
It is the responsibility of the content architect to define the Content Models. The translation specialist should only be familiar with their structure as outlined in the following steps.

Because the Content Models define the structure of your content, you need to know which fields of your models must be translated. Generally you work with the content architect to define this. To browse the fields of your content models, follow the steps below.

  1. Navigate to Tools > Assets > Content Fragment Models.

  2. Content Fragment Models are generally stored in a folder structure. Click the folder for your project.

  3. The models are listed. Click the model to see the details.
    Content Fragment Models

  4. The Content Fragment Model Editor opens.

    1. The left column contains the fields of the model. This column interests us.
    2. The right column contains the fields that can be added to the model. This column we can ignore.
      Content Fragment Model Editor

  5. Click one of the fields of the model. AEM marks it and the details of that field are shown in the right column.
    Content Fragment Model Editor detail

Take note of the field Property Name for all fields that must be translated. You will need this information later in the journey. These Property Name s are required to inform AEM which fields of your content must be translated.

TIP
Generally the content architect provides the translation specialist with the Property Name s of all the fields required for translation. These field names are needed for later in the journey. The prior steps are provided for the understanding of the translation specialist.