If you're translating your Projects internally rather than using a translations vendor, you should use the CSV (Comma Separated Value) translation file.
The translation CSV contains each block of text as a row in the file. To update the text, you replace the text in each cell with the translation.
File structure
The CSV consists of two columns: A and B.
- Column A has the header name id. It contains the element ID of the text you're editing.
- Column B has the header name text. It contains the text to be translated.
The first 22 rows contain text that is inherent to all Projects—for example, instructional or informational text like Drag some answers here in a Drag and Drop interaction.
The rows after contain the text for elements you have added to your Project.
It can often be enough to look at the text in Column B to understand which part of your course you're changing. However, the IDs in Column A can also tell you more information about which element you're editing. For example, the ID header/progress/courseCompletion/title tells you that you are editing the title text that appears next to the progress menu in the header of the Project.
For your custom text, the ID will have some plain text names to tell you the type of element being changed but it will also contain a longer alphanumerical string to identify the element itself. For example, contentBlock/7c33e758-da61-4a86-926a-7ec4f11c9dc7/title indicates you're editing the title of a content block—the longer string is the unique ID of the element.
Editing the CSV
The most common way to edit a translation CSV is using a spreadsheet like Excel or Google Sheets.
Steps
1. Open the CSV in your spreadsheet of choice
2. Go through each cell in column B and change the original text to the translated version. Column A should remain unchanged.
You should preserve the HTML that surrounds the text. This ensures the formatting remains unchanged when the file is imported back into the Project i.e. bold text stays bold.
For example:
<p>Hello</p>
should be replaced with
<p>Hola</p>
3. Save or export your file as a CSV with UTF-8 text encoding
|
Note: When opening and saving CSVs, some spreadsheets work slightly differently to others. Some spreadsheets allow you to open files directly while others require you to import them. You should refer to the software manufacturer's documentation for the correct method if you're unsure. |
Next steps
Once you've edited your CSV, you can upload it back into your Project to either create a new Variation or update an existing one.
See Translating your course with translation files for further guidance.