Documentation AEM as a Cloud Service User Guide

Get Started with AEM Sites Translation

Last update: June 4, 2024

Applies to:
Experience Manager as a Cloud Service

Topics:
Translation

CREATED FOR:

Admin

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

The Story So Far

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

Understand the basic concepts of AEM Sites content creation.
Be familiar with how AEM supports translation.

This article builds on those fundamentals so you understand how AEM stores and manages 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 sites content in AEM. After reading you should:

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

Requirements and Prerequisites

There are several requirements before you begin translating your 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. As such, 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 project-administrators group in AEM

How AEM Stores Content

For the translation specialist, it is not important to understand in-depth how AEM manages content. However, being familiar with the basic concepts and terminology is 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.

Sites Console

The sites console provides an overview of the structure of your content making it easy to navigate your content and manage it by creating new pages, moving and copying pages, and publishing content.

To access the sites console:

In the global navigation menu, select Navigation > Sites.
The sites console opens to the top level of your content.
Make sure that the Column View is selected using the view selector at the top-right of the window.
By tapping or clicking on an item in a column, it shows the content beneath it in the hierarchy in the column to the right.
By tapping or clicking the checkbox of an item in a column, it selects that item and shows the selected item’s details in the column to the right and revealing several actions available for the selected item in the toolbar above.
By tapping or clicking on the rail selector at the top left, you can also show the Content Tree view for a tree overview of your content.

Using these simple tools you can intuitively navigate your content structure.

NOTE

The content architect normally defines the content structure while the content authors create the content within that structure.

As the translation specialist it is important to simply understand how to navigate that structure and understand where content is located.

Page Editor

The sites console lets you navigate your content and provides an overview of its structure. To see the details of an individual page, you need to use the sites editor.

To edit a page:

Use the sites console to locate and select a page. Remember that you need to select the check box of an individual page to select it.
Select the Edit option in the toolbar.
The sites editor opens with the selected page loaded for editing in a new browser tab.
Mousing over or tapping content reveals selectors for individual components. Components are the drag-and-drop building blocks that make up the page.

You can return to the sites console by switching back to that tab in your browser at any time. Using the sites editor you can quickly view the content of the page as the content authors and your audience can see it.

NOTE

The content authors create your site content using the sites editor.

As the translation specialist it is important to simply understand how to view the detail of that content using the sites editor.

Structure is Key

AEM’s content 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 your AEM 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.

AEM Translation Tools

Now that you understand the sites console and editor and the importance of content structure, we can look at how to translate content. The translation tools in AEM are quite powerful, but are simple to understand at a high level.

Translation Connector - The connector is the link between AEM and the translation service that you use.
Translation Rules - Rules define what content under particular paths should be translated.
Translation Projects - Translation projects gather content that should be addressed as a single translation effort and tracks the progress of the translation, interfacing with the connector to transmit the content to be translated and receive it back from the translation service.

You generally only set up your connector once for your instance and rules per project. Then you use translation projects to translate your content and keep its translations up to date on a continual basis.

What’s Next

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

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

Build on this knowledge and continue your AEM Sites translation journey by next reviewing the document Configure the translation connector where you learn how to connect AEM to a translation service.|

Additional Resources

While it is recommended that you move on to the next part of the translation journey by reviewing the document Configure the translation connector 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.

AEM Basic Handling - Learn the basics of the AEM UI to be able to comfortably navigate and perform essential tasks such as finding your content.
Identifying Content to Translate - Learn how translation rules identify content that needs translating.
Configuring the Translation Integration Framework - Learn how to configure the Translation Integration Framework to integrate with third-party translation services.
Managing Translation Projects - Learn how to create and manage both machine and human translation projects in AEM.

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