Use machine translations of article contents with DeepL
Purple Hub
This article guides you on how to use the machine translation feature in Purple Hub to translate your content.
If this feature is enabled, you can
- translate individual articles, or
- bulk translate multiple articles
into one or more languages simultaneously.
Powered by the DeepL API, this feature allows you to generate language variants of your original articles within Purple Hub with just a single click.
Visit the external link to the DeepL website to learn which languages are available in DeepL: https://developers.deepl.com/docs/resources/supported-languages
Important note on Machine Translation in Purple Hub
Machine translation is a helpful tool, but it’s not always perfect. Services like Google Translate and DeepL work quickly, but they can sometimes have trouble with complex content like links, HTML tags, or special characters such as quotation marks (« »).
Key Points for our Customers:
- Translations may not be perfect: Translations might be less accurate when handling content with links, HTML, or specific writing styles like special characters.
- Text may need manual edits: After using machine translation, double-check and fix any mistakes, especially for content with complex formatting.
These issues are ordinary for machine translation tools. We recommend using them as a starting point and reviewing the text to ensure it’s correct, especially with tricky formats.
- Have an Editor or Managing Editor role
- Have articles created in your Purple Hub which you want to translate
(1) Flag icon: When opening an article in Purple Hub, which you have already created, you will find a flag icon. By clicking on the icon, the languages menu opens in the right hand side bar.
(2) The language menu in the right sidebar of the article view lists all the translation options available for translating your article one at a time. If you prefer to translate multiple articles at once, switch to the Article Overview, where you can perform bulk translations on all your articles.
(3) Original language of you article: Indicates the original language of the article which you have currently open. Please ensure that the language matches your source text for the translation feature to work properly. You can change the language by selecting it from the list in the dropdown.
(4) Translations: Only the flags for the languages you have configured in your Polylang setup, are listed below. If there is already a headline next to a language flag displayed, this means, that the translations already exists for that language.
To add more languages, you will need a Super Admin role to configure them in the plugin settings.
(5) DeepL icon: To activate the option for using DeepL for machine translation, click on the DeepL logo. Once activated, it will turn blue.
(6) Duplicate Content: Activating this button allows you to duplicate your article in Purple Hub, instead of adding it as language variant. When you create a duplicate of your article with this option enabled, the duplicated article will be accessible by clicking on edit (7) or from the post overview.
(7) Edit: Clicking on this icon next to a flag, links you directly to the variant of the article to edit it.
(8) Sync: If you make changes to the article you are currently viewing, you can sync these updates to a previous translation, ensuring it reflects the latest content.
(9) Title of Your Language Version: Use this field to create or edit the title of the language variant for the selected language.
(10) Plus icon: By clicking on the plus icon, a new language variant of your article will be created in the selected language. In case the Duplicate content (6) option is enabled, there will be a duplicate of your article created.
The difference between a language variant and a duplicate of an article:
- A language variant is a translated version of your original article, with the ability to synchronise changes between variants. In the article overview, the original article and its variants are grouped together (see screenshot below).
- A duplicate, on the other hand, is an independent translated copy of your original article, synchronised only at the time of duplication and displayed separately in the Article Index.
If you navigate to Purple Hub -> Purple Feeds -> Articles, in the Post Overview you can select one or more articles from the list by checking the check box next to the item(s) on the left. Doing this will open the bulk options and display a button 'Translate'.
The Bulk Translate menu will give you the following options for the translation to the previously set up languages (via definition within the Polylang plugin):
- Translate with with DeepL: Creates a translated language variant of your selected article
- Copy originale items to selected languages: Creates a translated duplicate of your selected article
- Synchronise original items with translation in selected language: If you just made changes to the article you have currently selected, you can sync these updates to a previous translation, ensuring it reflects the latest content.
To learn more about the difference between language variants and duplicates, read the blue light box above.