Umbraco's translation features are not unlike those in many other CMSs' implementations. Umbraco employs an industry standard workflow that allows translation agencies to be part of the mix without having full access to the content or permission to publish anything to the public site. Umbraco generates a translation file in XML format that the translator user logs in to pick up. The translator user edits the file or uses an industry standard translation program to parse the XML file, makes the necessary translations, saves the file, and finally uploads the translated content back to Umbraco.
Chapter 2 covers in detail how to set up a user with restricted access, delves into granular permissions, and discusses setting multiple start nodes for content access.
To start a Workflow, you need to register a user (as was covered in Chapter 2, in the section “Umbraco Building Blocks”), give him access to the Translation section, and tell Umbraco where he should start in the content tree (in this case the start node is Runway Website (se). The complete user details should look like those shown in Figure 7-11.
A translation user has access to a restricted version of the Umbraco backoffice. In the example in the “Working with Hostnames” section, you set the start node for the translation user, but in a translation workflow that is a fruitless exercise because the user will only see the Translation section when he logs in. Of course, the user could have access to both the Content and Translation sections, in which case the restricted content access still applies.
Sending content to translation is a breeze after you've added at least one translation user to the backoffice. The following steps take you through the process:
If a valid e-mail server is configured for your installation, an e-mail is sent to the translators at this point, notifying them that a translation task has been assigned to them. In older versions of Umbraco, this was the only way of accessing an assigned task. Since version 4.0.5.2, the backoffice tools and access were added for convenience and accessibility.
This part of the workflow is now done. You can repeat the process for any and all sections of the website that you want translated. Alternatively, you can send the entire site for translation by starting at the Homepage node. This gives you the flexibility to use multiple translators for individual sections of the site. From this point on, the translator process takes over.
When you click the Upload button Umbraco saves a new version of the page with the applicable translations. This action does not publish these changes because that decision is still up to the original author of the page.
Umbraco processes the translation and presents you with a confirmation that the page has been updated and saved. In addition, you get the opportunity to preview the page here in the context of the site, as shown in Figure 7-19. Also, the page that was just translated no longer appears in the tasks assigned to you.
Now that the translation is done, the ball is back in the original creator's court. The next step in the workflow is to review the translation and publish the changes. To do these tasks, follow these steps:
As shown in Figure 7-20, the page that was just translated is marked as having been changed but not published, indicated by the orange asterisk next to the page name.
That is the Umbraco translation workflow in detail. Naturally, this process is repeatable for any number of pages or any size website.