AI machine translation

Document360’s AI machine translation feature enables seamless translation of text within your article. This capability ensures that all aspects of your content can be localized to the languages added to your project, allowing you to easily maintain a multilingual knowledge base.

Key benefits:

• Time-efficient: Easily translates article text, saving you time on manual translations.

• Consistency: Keeps terminology and phrasing uniform across languages, ensuring a cohesive user experience.

• Scalability: Easily handle translations across numerous articles and languages as your knowledge base grows.

NOTE

• When you perform machine translation for a Markdown article, it will be automatically converted to the WYSIWYG editor.

• If an article is deleted in the main language, it will also be deleted in all other languages. However, if an article is hidden in the main language, it will still be visible on the Knowledge base site in other languages.

• Along with the article content, machine translation also translates the meta title (displayed in the browser tab), as well as the titles of the articles and categories (folder, index, and page).

Prerequisites for using machine translation

To perform AI machine translation,

• Ensure you have sufficient machine translation character credits. You can check your available character credits from Settings () > Knowledge base portal > Localization & Workspaces > Machine translation. You can also purchase additional credits by clicking the Buy more button on the same page.

NOTE

Machine translation credits are consumed at a rate of one credit per translated character in the article. Each character translated reduces the available machine translation credits accordingly.

Using machine translation

You can translate articles using two methods:

1. Machine translation using the All articles () section

2. Translating articles from the editor

Method 1: Machine translation using the All articles () section

To translate multiple articles using the All articles () section, follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to Documentation () in the left navigation bar in the Knowledge base portal.

2. In the left navigation pane, navigate to All articles ().

3. From the article list, select the checkbox(s) next to the article(s) you wish to translate.

4. Click Machine translation.

   The Translate to other languages panel will appear.

5. Select the desired languages (e.g., German and Spanish).

6. Type Yes in the confirmation field and click Yes.

   NOTE

   • The Machine translation feature is only available for WYSIWYG and Advanced WYSIWYG editors. The selected articles will be switched over to the WYSIWYG editor and cannot be reverted.

   • If you update the content in your main language later, you must repeat these steps to ensure the translated versions reflect the updates.

Updating translation status for articles

On the All articles () page, after you select one or more articles, you can perform the following translation actions from the toolbar:

1. Machine translate: This option is available before an article has been translated for the first time.

2. Needs translation: After an article has been translated, you can manually change its status to indicate it requires further translation.

3. Mark as translated: When an article is in the translated status, you can manually change it to Mark as translated once it's complete.

NOTE
The Need translation status is only available for secondary languages in your workspace. When a new language is added to a workspace, all articles will appear with the Need translation status by default.

Method 2: Translating articles from the editor

To translate an article from the editor, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Knowledge base portal.

2. From the Workspace & Language dropdown, select the desired language, excluding the main language.

3. Navigate to the article you want to translate.

4. Ensure the appropriate content is available in the editor.

5. Click the Machine translation () icon. The Machine translation panel will appear with the following information:

   • Characters to be translated: Displays the number of characters in the article that will be translated.

   • Translate: Click to begin the machine translation process.

   • Buy more: Click to buy more machine translation credits.

   • Mark as ‘Needs translation‘ – Use this option to indicate that the article has not yet been translated. A globe () icon will be added next to the article's status () icon.

   • Mark as ‘Translated’ – Use this option to indicate that the article has been translated.

6. Click Translate to begin the translation process.

   A progress indicator will appear, and other operations will be restricted until the translation is complete. Only the content will be translated; the formatting will remain consistent across all languages.

NOTE
If a translated article has been updated, and you wish to apply machine translation to the article again, click ✓ Translated and select Mark as ‘Needs translation’. This will change the translation status back to Needs translation.

Understanding machine translation with real-time examples

You can choose between the two methods based on your use case.

1. Scenario 1: Translating articles to existing languages

2. Scenario 2: Adding a new language to the project

Managing machine translation credits

To view the available machine translation credits for your project, navigate to Settings() > Knowledge base portal > Localization & Workspaces > Machine translation.

On this page, you will find the details regarding your used and available machine translation credits.

NOTE

• An individual article should have fewer than 50,000 characters for machine translation to work. The character count includes all formatting, such as tables, accordions, and other complex elements. Articles with extensive formatting are more likely to exceed this limit. If the character count is too high, consider splitting the article into smaller, manageable sections as a workaround.

• Machine translation credits are allocated at the project level and apply collectively across all workspaces and languages within that project.

• Machine translation credits vary according to your subscription plan.

Article translation status indicators

Keep track of the translation status and update it easily as needed. Translation statuses help you identify which articles need updates and which are fully translated, ensuring you’re always informed of your multilingual content's status. The article's translation status indicator is located above the text formatting toolbar in a project workspace that contains multiple languages in both Markdown, WYSIWYG, and Advanced WYSIWYG.

NOTE
The translation status indicator is unavailable on the main language article.

Filtering articles based on translation status

1. Navigate to Documentation () in the left navigation bar in the Knowledge base portal.

2. In the left navigation pane, navigate to All articles ().

   The list of articles will appear.

3. Click Filter on the right.

4. Expand the Status filter and select Needs translation or Translated. Note that this filter is unavailable on the main language article page.

From here, you can perform actions such as:

• Changing the translation status

• Machine translate

Troubleshooting

Encountering error while translating an article

Error: Unable to connect the Translate API
The error message "Error occurred: Unable to Connect the Translate API" appears when attempting to apply machine translation to an article in the editor or from the All articles section. This occurs because the HTML content of the article exceeds the character limit of 50,000 set by the Azure Translation service. Articles with a large number of tables or complex HTML elements are more prone to exceeding this limit, as these elements contribute significantly to the overall character count.

Steps to resolve:

1. Open the code view of the article you are trying to translate.

2. Copy the entire HTML content of the article.

3. Use a character counting tool to determine the total number of characters in the HTML content.

4. If the character count exceeds 50,000, split the article content into smaller sections and create multiple articles.

5. Apply machine translation to the smaller articles separately to proceed with the translation.

Latest content in the main language not reflected in secondary languages

Updates made to the main language will not automatically reflect in other languages. You must manually initiate the translation process using the Machine translation feature.

When an article is created in the main language, its structure is automatically replicated in secondary languages, but the content itself is not transferred.

Steps to resolve: To update the content in secondary languages, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the All articles () section in the main language.

2. Select the article you want to translate into secondary languages.

3. Click Machine translation.

   The Translate to other languages panel will appear.

4. Select the desired languages.

NOTE

• The translating article(s) will switch to the Advanced WYSIWYG editor and cannot be reverted.

• Articles in New or Draft status in secondary languages will be overwritten by the latest version from the main language.

5. Type Yes in the confirmation field and click Yes to proceed.

The Machine translation icon is greyed out or unclickable

The Machine translation () icon in the editor becomes greyed out when the corresponding article in the secondary language is empty.

When a new language is added to the Localization page, articles and their content are copied to the secondary language space automatically. However, if a new article is later created in the main language, a corresponding article is automatically created in the secondary language, but without any content. This leaves the secondary article empty, deactivating the Machine translation () icon.

Steps to resolve:

To enable the Machine translation (), follow one of these methods:

Method 1: Apply Machine translation from the secondary language

1. Copy and paste the content from the main language article into the secondary language article.

   The Machine translation () icon would have been enabled now.

2. Click the Machine translation () icon and select Needs translation.

Method 2: Apply Machine translation from the main language

1. Navigate to Documentation () in the left navigation bar in the Knowledge base portal.

2. In the left navigation pane, navigate to All articles ().

3. Select the desired article and click Machine translation.

4. Choose one or more secondary languages and click Translate.