JCOGS Auto-Translate

Auto-translation services for EE5, EE6 and EE7.

JCOGS Auto-Translate is a simple to use tag based interface to the DeepL machine translation service. The add-on works with both ExpressionEngine 5, 6 and 7. It is fast, efficient and provides a range of translation options that easily enable the use of multiple languages within the ExpressionEngine CMS.

Features

JCOGS Auto-Translate provides a range of simple tag-baseds method for delivering machine translation content to your ExpressionEngine CMS based website. It features:

• a unified control panel to store api keys, account status information and access to add-on documentation;
• the option to determine whether tags are included in the translation;
• the option to allow translated text to be cached;
• automatic fail-over between multiple API keys; as the allowance on one key is consumed JCOGS Auto-Translate will automatically transfer processing to the next available API key.

Multiple vendors now provide machine translations via API services. Future versions of Auto-Translate will add support for similar services from other providers, for example Google and Microsoft.

Development Tools

In addition JCOGS Image offers several other features that will be of particular value to EE developers:

• tag based access to information about the status of the translation accounts in use
• tag based tools to obtain information about the language options available for a translation account
• conditional tools to enable template based decision making about whether to invoke translation or not
• full control over which languages are translated, plus of caching options and html tag processing from tag parameters allows for tag-by-tag control of your output
• advanced unified cache ensures that a common block of text used in multiple pages is only translated once

Requirements

JCOGS Auto-Translate has been tested and is supported for use on EE5, EE6 and EE7 systems. It requires the server hosting the EE installation to be running php 7.4 (or better).

To access the DeepL machine translation service you will need one or more DeepL API keys, which may be obtained from DeepL. Usage Notes

To facilitate evaluation of their translation services DeepL offer a limited capacity API key at no cost; full translation services require a paid-for account.

Installation

Copy the jcogs_mts folder to your system/user/addons folder and then install from the ExpressionEngine Control Panel Add-ons page.

Licensing and Operating Modes

JCOGS Auto-Translate is licensed software, to get full use from it you will need to purchase a license key. A license key will allow the add-on to operate without limitation on a single EE installation running on a server connected to the public internet and on any number of EE installations linked to servers with local IP ranges or using domains ending in .test, .local and several other top-level domains.

Use with staging servers

To facilitate the development of sites, licensed copies of JCOGS Auto-Translate will offer you the opportunity to register a staging server linked to a separate public internet domain to use alongside the live site. Simply enter the domain name of the staging server into the input field that will appear below the spaces used to register the license key and email address. The license status of the staging server will be recognised automatically when you install a copy of JCOGS Auto-Translate on the staging server.

Using JCOGS Auto-Translate without a license - demonstration mode

When used without a license JCOGS Auto-Translate will operate in a demonstration mode. While in demonstration mode JCOGS Auto-Translate is fully functional, making it possible for you to fully evaluate the software, however a text watermark to any content translated. The text watermark takes the form of additional text inserted at random locations within the text sent for translation.

Configuration

Configuration of the add-on is required before it can be used. Configuration is controlled using the add-on settings page which can be accessed from the ExpressionEngine Control Panel Add-ons page.

Usage

Translations are created by adding one or more {exp:jcogs_mts:translate} or a single {exp:jcogs_mts:translate_all} tags to your template.

To avoid complications arising from inadvertent translations of mark-up content, EE Auto-Translate does not attempt to translate any of:

• The HTML head section of a web page
• The content of any HTML script or style tags
• The content of any EE comments within the template
• The content of any late-parsed EE short-form tags (i.e. path and template variables)

Auto-Translate will remove these sections from any translation text regardless of the setting chosen for Ignore HTML tags either as a default setting or if specified in a tag as a parameter.

Ignoring HTML tags

By default JCOGS Auto-Translate is configured to ignore any HTML tags it finds in text to be translated; a feature that can be disabled at the defaults and tag level.
The exclusion of HTML tags is part of the service provided by the machine translation service. Due to limitations of the HTML processing routines employed by the machine translation service some HTML processing errors might still arise from translations made using this option, especially when using translate_all tags. If this happens let JCOGS Design know: it is working with the machine translation provider to find fixes for as many issues with this feature as possible.

Fully supported, ongoing development…

If you have features that you would like to see included in a future version of JCOGS Auto-Translate get in touch! Currently in the development pipeline:

• Support for more machine translation service providers, including Google, Amazon and Microsoft
• More tags to support advanced operations - including a “don’t translate” fencing system
• Improvements to text caching operations