The volume of multilingual content is increasing, and that content comes with tight deadlines and frequent updates. Developing, managing and delivering that content through global digital experiences requires the close alignment of content and localization teams. But how can these teams — often dispersed and using different systems and skill sets — work together seamlessly?

XTM International and Contentful have teamed up to build the XTM Connect app, an integration that enables mutual customers to easily globalize their content and overcome this challenge.

The XTM Connect app

The XTM Connect app enables users to launch and manage localization projects from within the Contentful web app. The app simplifies and streamlines translation workflows between Contentful and XTM Cloud, an enterprise translation management system — all in a single, integrated environment.

Read more about content localization for global marketing strategy with Contentful

Connected workflow and familiar work environment

After the app is installed from the App Marketplace, content writers, editors and managers can initiate, automate and track translation requests from within the Contentful web app. The connector eliminates email-based, siloed workflows. You don’t have to deal with file exports and imports or copying and pasting to get translation complete. Say goodbye to repetitive, monotonous tasks.

Intelligent automation at work

The integration ensures a connected ecosystem that enables automated content workflows. Content creators can submit any content type for translation directly from within the Contentful web app. The translated files are automatically pushed back to Contentful, where they are ready for publishing or further processing. The entire process is driven by intelligent automation. Your teams’ productivity grows, and content goes to market faster.

The new integration takes advantage of intelligent automation built into XTM Cloud and connects all stakeholders — content managers, localization managers, marketing managers, and customers. Not only does it automate, it also gives you access to flexible workflows suited to individual enterprise needs. Intelligent automation allows for custom workflows where multiple language service providers, translators, or internal country reviewers do their job. The scope of translation is flexible to address your needs — human translation can be followed by review, machine translation with post-editing, transcreation, or quality assurance checks.

Continuous localization mode: Step back and let translation happen

Digital transformation requires content teams to produce massive amounts of content and deploy it to various markets. These teams often ask themselves, how quickly can we get this piece to market? How long will it take to update the translation so it can go live fast?

 Content updates and translation happen concurrently. There’s no need to translate everything from scratch. Whenever a change is made in the source text, the connector detects content updates and sends them for translation in XTM Cloud.

The same text is never translated twice, so Contentful users will see reduced costs, higher quality output and faster time to market. Reduce project management and linguist overhead, and deliver consistently repeatable results.

Frequently sending small batches out to translation and updating existing projects is the new normal. Here is where XTM Connect can help. Built for agile content workflows and seamless user experiences, Contentful ensures that content is deployed reliably and quickly. In practice, this means that whenever a change is made in the source text in Contentful, the connector recognizes the changes and sends them for translation in XTM Cloud within a single project.

Translation management system with an artificial-intelligence option

Our AI-powered translation management system produces fast, consistent and cost-efficient translation. Inter-language Vector Space, the latest advancement in NLP AI, is able to work out relationships between words and how close their meanings are to one another. It simplifies, automates and streamlines the translation process for linguists, helping with simple, repetitive tasks such as detecting translation errors, tag placement and many others.

Translation workflow in Contentful

XTM Connect enables you to send content for translation, track the translation progress, view project workflow steps, and automatically import finished translations back to Contentful. Here is what the translation process looks like in the Contentful web app after the app is installed.

Submit content from within Contentful

You can select a specific content type in Contentful and send it for translation directly within XTM Connect. No manual file uploads, downloads or email exchanges needed. This video will guide you through the process step by step.

XTM Connect: the source content is sent to XTM Cloud

Set character limit for translations 

You can set a character limit for translated strings to prevent text length issues. When translators exceed the set character limit, they will get a warning that they didn't meet the requirements set for a project in XTM Cloud. XTM Workbench will automatically alert them. 

 XTM Connect: setting character limit for translation

Send one item for translation — or multiple items in a batch 

With XTM Connect, you have flexibility to choose various translation workflows. You can immediately send a single item for translation, or you can add it to the queue and send it later.  The same applies to multiple items. You can send them for translation instantly or add them to the queue. When the item is in the queue, you can still edit the source text. After content is sent for translation, you can track its progress in the translation queue in Contentful.

XTM Connect: content items in the translation queue

Translate in XTM Cloud

Then the content goes straight to XTM Cloud where a project is created automatically, workflows are defined, resources allocated and the translation process starts. You can automatically start projects from within XTM Connect using the settings in XTM project templates.

 XTM Cloud: translating source content in XTM Workbench

Use machine translation for faster delivery

To keep up with the frenetic pace of content iterations, it’s a good idea to make use of the available machine translation engines. This way, it will take less time for linguists to complete their translation. Post-editing or a fully-automated MT approach can dramatically expedite translation for certain content types, especially those with short timelines. Faster deliveries mean that the same translators are now available to translate more content.

XTM Cloud: machine translating source content in XTM Workbench

Manage translations from within Contentful

There’s no need to switch between platforms. You can stay within Contentful to approve the final translation or comment on completed translations and send them back if they don’t pass the review.

XTM Connect: the translated content is received back in Contentful

Publish translated content in Contentful

Once your translation is complete, it is imported back to Contentful where you can publish content to all of your channels at once.  

Whether you are a content manager, marketing manager or localization manager, you will immediately see the benefits of using a central, connected localization hub within XTM Connect. Your localized content will go to market faster, its quality will improve — and this will impact your company’s bottom line. 

Try the XTM Connect app for yourself. If you don’t have a Contentful account yet, sign up for a free account today.

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