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How do you know if the translations in your site are great, OK or require corrections? Are there any translation glitches that make your business look funny? If you’re not sure, you’re also not alone. But, a solution is coming.

Our own site, WPML.org, is running 11 languages. We translate a lot of content on a regular basis. Some of this content is simple but some is highly technical. It’s hard for us to review every translation in every language. I bet that it’s even harder for others, who don’t have staff that speaks all the languages of the site.

We also know that your Website is your reputation. Anything that’s written in a weird way makes you look unprofessional. It doesn’t matter if you wrote it yourself or if it got translated for you. It’s still on your site.

Exactly for this purpose, we are starting to build now a new module for WPML, which will allow you to collect feedback about the quality of your translations and update whatever needs improvement.

A Translation Feedback Form on the Front-end Pages

The feedback module will allow you to add a little indication on newly translated pages, saying that they were translated.

You’ll be able to choose which pages will display this button. For example, you can select that only translation from English to French, completed in the last 21 days will display the feedback request. You will also have complete control over where on the page it appears and how it looks.

When visitors click on the translation feedback button, they can rate the translation.

If visitors select low rating (from OK down), they can also enter an explanation of what’s wrong.

Moderating and Handling Feedback

You will have a new admin screen which lists all the feedback that you received. You can filter it by ‘requiring action’ (translation that needs fixing). You’ll decide what feedback you want to handle and what to discard (like people asking for your phone number using this feedback).

Moderating translation feedback

To handle this feedback, you have two choices:

  • Edit the translation yourself and indicate that the issue is resolved
  • Send the issue to the translator who wrote that page

WPML knows exactly who translated everything, so it will assign the issue to the correct translator or translation service.

To you, it doesn’t matter. WPML will notify the translator (or service). The translator can either change the translation or send you a message with an explanation. This way, you have tracking of what issues are resolved and what need some attention. In any case, you will know that everything that people reported gets handled.

Schedule and Account

This project is in the “GUI and definition state” right now. It means that we’re working on the user interface design and working out the last details. We’re looking forward to your feedback, to know if you find this feature useful and if you’d like to see it any differently.

We’d like to close the definition by the end of February and then complete the development until May. There’s a lot more work than appears because we need to communicate feedback to different translation services that we’re working with.

Since anyone using WPML is dealing with translations, this module will be available for all WPML accounts (Multilingual Blog and CMS).

Feedback?

What do you think? Would you use this in your sites? If not, why?

Leave your comments and we’ll get back to you.

How can we make WPML better for you?

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22 Responses to “A New Translation Feedback Module Coming to WPML”

  1. Hi, it is a great feature, but the feedback button should have more than one display way, for example, when the user select the content text, the feedback button can display, then the selected text can be annotated as an error translatetion. Also this button can be showed before/ after the content.

    By the way, it is a addon or main feature that will be integrated in WPML.

    Thanks!

    • This will be a new module (plugin) for WPML. It will be available to all WPML accounts. You will be able to display it on the front-end any way you like. We will provide preset display modes (like on the footer, floating left, floating right) and will also give the API, so you can add it to templates any way you prefer.

      Annotating texts with problems is a great idea. I’m not sure if we can do it right away, but we’ll see.

      I don’t want visitors to be able to modify your content. This mechanism is intended to report issues. Crowd-translation is another great feature, but here we’re focusing on allowing visitors to leave feedback about the translation work.

      • Yep, annotating texts is more convenient to the visitors or the content publisher to correct the problem of the translations. But there is a challenge of the development. Below screenshot showed when I select the texts, a feedback button will be displayed, and I click this button the selected texts will be saved with the visitor’s feedback words. http://prntscr.com/e9w5qy

  2. I’m very much looking forward to this! We have already been trying to streamline the process of gathering translation feedback from our audience, and I hope this will be a great aid. A few questions when considering a very active and constructive audience:

    -How can the assigned translator be changed for needed revisions? (We work with volunteers and partner organizations for translation, so it is likely that the original translator may not be available for revisions or updates)

    -Can revision requests be sent in batches to a translator, rather than individually?

    -Can the WPML admin modify the revision request to add context / clarity before sending the request to a translator?

    -Can the revision requests be viewed / exported as a CSV per post/page, or viewed in a way to see all requests for a page simultaneously (improve workflow and reduce clicks)?

    Thank you so much! I am very excited for this feature

    • 1. Good point about sending the feedback to translators. We’ll add an option to choose who will receive the feedback and should make the edit.

      2. Hopefully, there will not be hundreds of feedbacks about wrong translation to fix. I don’t think that we can add batch notifications because of the way you will do the moderation. We’re planning for this moderation to be similar to comments. You expand each issue (without a page refresh), respond to it and move to the next one.

      3. Yes, there will be a way for the moderator to include a note together with the notification. Each “issue” will have a little conversation attached to it, with the messages that the admin and translator exchange on the subject.

      4. We didn’t plan on an export for notifications. It’s something that we can always add later.

  3. Can this feature be completely turned off?

    I am using WPML on various blogs and I don’t want readers to get distracted by trying to review my translations.

    Thank you!

    • Sure you can turn it off. First, it’s going to be as a separate plugin “WPML Translation Feedback”. If you don’t install it, there will be no feedback inputs anywhere.

      If you install this module, you can control where the feedback inputs will appear:

      * Nowhere
      * For specific languages
      * For newly translated content (you choose what’s considered as new)

      And, you will have full control over how the feedback icon looks and where it appears on the pages, where it’s enabled.

      • Thanks for the clarification Amir!

        I am sure for larger sites or those who need many translations, this will be a great feature.

    • This new feature will use the existing translation tables, so you will be able to use it for both new and old translations.

  4. It looks like a great feature and I want to use it on at least two of my WPML websites.
    If you need a tester, please give a sign ?

    • Great. Thanks for offering to help. We’re taking note of people who agree to test and we’ll send a beta version as soon as it’s available.

  5. Looks like a very interesting feature! Our information website for refugees is heavily reliant on volunteer translators but quality control is always hard to manage.

    While we do already have a feedback-mail-form, a ticket based system like this would be a neater solution, especially if it integrates well into the translation-management-plugin.

    For us, there is one important point, that would really make a difference:

    Highlighting the context of Feedback (Could be reused for the translation management plugin, to highlight the changes in a post, which would be another great feature for WPML)

    I’m not so interested in directly emailing the feedback to the translators. I think there has to be the possibility of reviewing the feedback first and then assigning translators to fix it.

    • Yes. What we’re planning is that the site admin would get feedback for review. When you get new feedback, you can:

      1. Trash it
      2. Send to a translator (as is)
      3. Edit, add your notes and then send to a translator

      Moderation should go quickly, similar to WordPress comments. You will have a list of new feedback and you can go through them without reloading anything.

      The translator needs to confirm that it’s resolved and add a note about what’s done (so you know what’s going on in your site).

      Does this make sense?

      • Thanks for you quick reply, that sounds like a solid solution!

        However I can’t stress enough the importance of text-highlighting. There must be around some handy js plugins capable of converting a text selection into useful values that can be saved and transmitted.

        • Could be, but it’s not that simple and will conflict with quite a lot of plugins and themes. How about just asking for people to specifically reference the problem?

          Something like:

          What’s wrong with this translation?
          ___________

          Can you copy/paste the problem text from the page?
          ___________

          I’m looking for something that we can actually develop, in reasonable time, people will know how to use and will have no conflicts with other code running on your site.

  6. Good idea. I might indeed make use of it

    Referring to texts that need correction would be great indeed, as mentioned above. Problem will be to prevent spam, but such would only be visible for administrators.

    Thanks for the effort.

    Wim