Drupal translation with PO and POT files

To easily manage the translation of a Drupal site, download the source strings in PO or POT format from your Drupal instance and bring them to the localization management platform POEditor. Here, you can manage the string translation process in multiple ways, into any language.

Find below the steps you need to take to quickly set up your Drupal translation project.

Set up your Drupal translation project

If you don’t have a POEditor account, take a second to register one. You’ll be able to manage for free up to 1000 Drupal interface strings.

Once you’re logged in, create a project in your Dashboard and add the languages you’ll be working with. You’ll want to add your Drupal site’s default language and the target languages (the languages you want to translate your Drupal site into).

After adding the languages to the translation project, import your Drupal source strings to POEditor using the import functionality in the project page. You can import them either from .pot or from .po.

Import terms and translation (Project page) - POEditor translation platform

POEditor fully supports Gettext PO and POT files, so after importing the file with the source strings, all the term attributes (such as context, comments and plurals) should be reflected in the translation project.

PRO TIP: To automate the import process, you can use the API or an integration with a code hosting platform. POEditor is currently integrated with GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab and Azure Repos.

Choose how you want to translate the Drupal interface strings

After setting up the Drupal translation project, you can begin the string translation process. The translation options you can choose from are:

  • Assigning translators to specific languages in your translation project, by adding them as contributors. These people will be able to use POEditor’s online editor to add translations to your project.
Add contirbutor (Project page) - POEditor translation management platform
  • Crowdsourcing translations from your community for specific languages, using public projects. You can also allow others to add new languages to your public translation project. Just enable the option Contributors Can Add New Languages in the project’s settings.
  • Using the Automatic Translation feature. This works with the machine translation engine of your choice, from the options available. MT options include DeepL Translate, Google Translate and Microsoft Translator.
  • Ordering translation services from one of our partner language service providers*.

You can of course mix these translation options to your convenience to achieve your Drupal site localization. Note that if you have a paid account, you and your contributors can also reuse translations from the Translation Memory.

*To order human translation services from the integrated providers, you’ll need to add your source strings as translations in your source language. If you imported your source strings from .pot and your source language is at 0% completion rate in the project, to take it to 100% you can use the Copy Terms to Translation feature in the upper right corner of the source language page. This will copy the source strings from the terms to the translation boxes of the source language.

Export the translated PO files and add them to your Drupal site

Anytime during the string translation process, you can export the localized languages from POEditor and import them to your Drupal site. To export a language, access its translation page in the project, then use the Export functionality to download it in PO format to your computer. Note that exporting to the POT format is not a good idea, because POT files only contain the msgids and not the translations too.

Export PO file (Export page) - POEditor translation management system

With the API or with a code hosting service integration, you can also export all the localized languages at once. In case a translation is not specified in a particular language, your Drupal site will use the source text instead.

Resources:

POEditor product updates: spring 2021

Our team has been keeping busy this past season – as per usual 😊 – to make your translation and localization management experience better with our software. We’ve been working on various POEditor product updates, some more user-facing than others. Below, we’ve put together a list of some things we’ve removed from our backlog, among the most highly-requested.

New login options

Among the latest POEditor product updates are also support for two-factor authentication and email login. 2FA sets an extra layer of security on your account, by asking for a code when you log in, which is generated by an Authentication App set up priory by you on one of your devices. Email login allows you to sign in to your account with your email address and a one-time sign in code you receive on email, so you won’t need to use a password.

POEditor localization platform login options

QA Checks module enhanced

Previously available in the form of real-time translation notifications, the QA Checks module has been improved in two ways. On the one side, the QA checks list has grown to encapsulate more errors. On the other, you can now filter the translations with detected errors from the ones without. Consequently, this will speed up the process of fixing any mismatches between the source and target strings.

An example of errors found by POEditor's QA Checks module
Errors found by the QA Checks module

If you’re interested to learn more about the available options to sign in to our localization management platform, you can find a full list here.

ICU for plural rules

As of recently, POEditor also understands ICU message syntax for plural rules. If a string in your source language contains plural-specific ICU message syntax, our localization platform will detect it. On this occasion, you will see an eye icon at the bottom right corner of any translation box in the translation editor. Clicking on this eye icon will open an ICU Editor, where you can specify translations for each plural form.

ICU syntax detected by POEditor’s online translation editor

Export empty translations option for API

Mirroring the option already existent in the user interface, the Export empty translations option is now also available with the API. To change this localization project setting via API, you can use the method projects_update with the argument fallback_language. The value of the fallback_language should be the code of the language from which you want to export empty translations.

TextMaster integration is back

Finally, we’re happy to let you know the integration with the language service provider TextMaster is once again available. So, when you order translations, you can now choose between two providers. Both Gengo and TextMaster offer two pricing tiers, each recommended for particular translation needs. The language pairs offered by Gengo are listed here and the ones offered by TextMaster are listed here.

Quotes received for selected language pair

If there are particular POEditor product updates you’d like to see in the future, we’d love to hear about them! The best way to contact us is on email, at info@poeditor.com – and we’ll get right back to you!

DeepL machine translation, now available with POEditor’s Automatic Translation feature

Due to popular demand, our translation management platform now supports machine translation with DeepL. Just as with the other supported machine translation engines, you can use DeepL in your website, game or app localization project via the Automatic Translation feature.

Why translate strings with DeepL

Although DeepL may not support all the language pairs supported by the machine translation engines from Google or Microsoft, fans of it report translation output to be superior compared to their competitors’ for some of the language pairs.

If you’re not sure which machine translation provider is for you, you can test them all in your POEditor account.

How to use machine translation with POEditor

First, make a basic setup for you translation project on POEditor. Make sure to add your source and target languages to it. If you need any help with this, you can find a setup tutorial for each supported localization format in our Knowledge Base.

After importing the source strings and your desired target languages, click on any of the target languages and then on Automatic Translation at the top of the translation page.

Automatic Translation - POEditor localization management platform

Choose your provider and language pair, and make sure to check that you have selected the correct strings to translate from using the preview on the right. Then hit Translate to make the magic happen.

After machine translating one language, you can use the same setup to translate more languages from your localization project.

Machine translate multiple languages - POEditor

Note that POEditor’s Automatic Translation features fills in all the empty translation boxes in your chosen target languages. It does not overwrite any translations that already exist in your project.

We hope you knock yourself out with this newly integrated machine translation provider. If you have any questions or feedback, let us know at info@poeditor.com or in the comments.

Top POEditor features you may not be using (yet) in your localization project

Whether you are interested in mobile app localization or you want to translate website strings, POEditor is surely one of the best translation management systems for the job.

One main point of difference for our translation and localization management system is that the user interface is uncluttered. Along the years, we’ve been stubborn to keep our UI easy to use for everyone, especially newbies. This meant making obvious only the most essential tools for translation and localization management, while keeping other powerful, more specialized tools on the discrete side.

Here we list a few of our top features that you may or may not be using in your localization project. If you’re not using them, we encourage you to give them a go. We’ve heard they make a great difference.

Tags

We built the Tagging System to help you keep strings grouped in your localization project.

Since we don’t store the files you use on import, but parse them to get the language data and store that only in our database, it’s important to know which strings came from where, in case you’re working with multiple source files.

Tags work perfectly for this case when you use them on import. But you can use them as custom filters too, and also mark your terms with tags in the interface, after import.

Tagging terms when importing them to the localization project
Tagging terms when importing them to the localization project

The best thing about tags? They are supported by the API and by the integrations with GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab and Azure DevOps.

Continue reading →

How to automate your localization workflow with Callbacks and Webhooks

At POEditor, we offer plenty of ways to keep yourself updated about the status of your localization projects. Polling the API over and over, however, is not always the most efficient way to go around this.

To use Callbacks and/or Webhooks would be a wiser way instead.

What are Callbacks

Using Callbacks is a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” kind of process.

Basically, what Callbacks do is fire a request to an endpoint specified by you every time an event is triggered. Events include: language is completely translated, language is completely proofread and so on.

POEditor callbacks form

Now, with this information you can get the gears going. If you use a code hosting service integration, you will probably want to push the updated language file to your repository. You can easily do that from the UI by selecting the language and clicking on the Export option. OR you can do this automatically by calling a webhook.

Continue reading →

POEditor design changes: what’s new

Every now and then, redesigns need to happen. It’s never an easy job, because you want to please everyone. However, with a clear head and a tight-knit team, you can put together the feedback you received from your users and the best UX practices and come up with a better product.

For those who already know the POEditor localization platform for a while, we’ve put together this blog post to present the main design changes. Rest assured that they’re not that big.

Options Menu moves to the top

For easier navigation, the Options Menu in the Project Page was moved to the top of the work space.

Continue reading →

Localization project notifications on Microsoft Teams

Plenty of things happen when you localize software and keeping up to date with the events in your localization projects is key to maintaining a smooth workflow. Since nothing beats realtime notifications in terms of communicating events efficiently to the members of your localization team, we decided to make it possible to connect to another popular chat software – Microsoft Teams.

How to connect POEditor to Microsoft Teams

Connecting to Microsoft Teams is pretty easy and straightforward. If you need help with this, you can find the steps described in detail in our Knowledge Base.

Note that only the POEditor user hosting the localization projects needs to make the setup with Microsoft Teams. The other localization team members need just to join the Teams channel designated to receive notifications about the localization projects.

Microsoft Teams integration settings - POEditor translation and localization management system

Continue reading →

Continuous localization with GitHub and POEditor

Why continuous localization

In today’s digital world, more and more software is becoming alive. This is due to a shift in the software industry from a linear approach to software development to an agile approach. Apps and websites are updated all the time, in small chunks, instead of being built in long development cycles, culminating with big releases. Thus, when the software product is launched, it is no longer the end of the development process for it, but the beginning. 

Naturally, if you are continuously developing your multilingual software product, you should also continuously localize it. You don’t want to leave behind any of your users when you roll out new features. Nor do you want to look unprofessional, by not localizing parts of your software in certain languages. So it’s a good idea to aim for a continuous approach on localization.

What is POEditor

POEditor is an online localization service and translation management system, designed to help all parties involved in the localization process on their quest to achieve a continuous workflow.

As a freemium SaaS, POEditor offers free and paid accounts and supports free of charge the localization of open source software with an OSI-approved license.

If you use a translation and localization management service like POEditor, you’re likely to see better collaboration between team members, an increase in automation and productivity, and more streamlined workflows all around.

Continue reading →