It's common that the source language texts are initially created by the people making the product - developers, designers, managers, etc. before they get checked and improved by a copy or UX writer.
We know that in Localazy as well. English is not our mother tongue, and when we are developing a new feature, we rather focus on the code and not on copywriting. Before release, everything needs to go through our beloved colleague Petr, who transforms our clumsy developer texts into something more catchy and concise (and hopefully also grammatically correct 🙂).
This process can be easily automated with Localazy, so you can ensure that only the fine-tuned texts and translations make it to production.
⚙️ Setting up the workflow 🔗
Let's have a look at how to configure your project to use improved source language in production.
In the following instructions, I'm going to use Developer English as the source language and English for the final fine-tuned translations. If your source language is different, you can use another pair, e.g., Czech for the source and Czech (Czechia) for the finalized version. From our data, over 90% of projects use English, and that's the reason why we also included Developer English on Localazy.
1. Create a new project 🔗
Create a new project on Localazy and select Developer English as the source language.
2. Create a new workflow 🔗
Navigate to Workflows in the console and select your newly created project. Now, create a new empty workflow. You can name it as you want. I chose Developer English > English, so it's descriptive.
My new workflow is ready, but it's empty and stopped. Let's edit it.
Be sure to enable the workflow as they are, for security reasons, disabled by default. Also, select the desired action, which is to Copy translations to another language.
When the Action is selected, additional configuration boxes will be shown. In the Action Configuration, add English to Target Languages.
Note: be sure to press the green plus button on the right side of the selection to add the language.
Also, tick the checkbox below the language selection, as we want to send copied translations to the review process. It's important, as the review process will help us later to see all the changes in the source language and focus only on those that need our attention.
We want to trigger our workflow on new keys (whether uploaded or created manually) and also on updated keys. Tick the first three options in the Trigger Event box, as shown below.
We only want the source language to be copied, so let's untick Apply to all events in the Filter box. New options are shown, with the Language Filter being the most important part for us. By default, the Source language only checkbox is ticked, which is exactly what we want. No other action is required.
You can read more about filters in the docs.
Click the Save button, and our new workflow is ready and enabled!
3. Add content to your project 🔗
It's time to upload content to the project. Use your preferred way - CLI, API, manual upload, or one of our plugins. The workflow is ready for all of these.
When new keys are uploaded (or existing ones are updated), the workflow will be triggered - it may take a few seconds - and the English translation will be ready as well. Now it's waiting to be reviewed and improved.
The review process allows you to go through all the changes and fix them. Such as in my case, where the definite article was somehow lost in the hardcore coding session. 🤓
As soon as someone more skilled in the English language goes through all the translations waiting for review, the perfected new language will be ready!
🚦 Publish unapproved translations 🔗
By default, Localazy uses the source language when there is a missing translation (or a not-yet-approved one). However, if you prefer to filter untranslated strings out of your localizable files, you can still get the fully translated English by going to the Settings of your projects and adding English to the list of languages for which unapproved translations are published.
The latest unapproved translation, which is going to be the one copied from the source language, is published as long as there is no approved one.
This option helps you to get your new release out quickly but gradually improve the quality with less manual work and with perfect control over the process.
🧩 Using the workflow in existing projects 🔗
The workflow is only triggered for new and updated keys, not for existing ones.
So, if you already have a project with existing translations, the simplest thing to do is to switch the source language to Developer English.
Select Developer English, open its context menu, and choose "Copy & create a new language," where you can select English. Optionally, you can also send all translations back to the review process for further checks and approval.
This way, your project will be perfectly prepared for the same setup as described in this article.
✔️ Conclusion 🔗
At Localazy, we understand that localization is not just about translating one language to another. The process of getting products or services translated with the finest quality is complex, and we are ready to assist you along the way as much as we can.
