Introducing "LingoChecks"

Note: This info is not relevant anymore. LingoChecks now is called quality checks — more power and abilities to make your localization easier.

We all know that translating is a challenging job. It is hard to maintain the context of the translations, you have to consider design aspects (e.g. length of the translation in dialog boxes), finding the right tone can be tricky, and taking care of technical aspects (e.g. placeholders) can be a tedious task at times.

At Lingohub we are constantly thinking about how we can make the (working) life of a translator easier. LingoChecks is a feature that every translator will love. With LingoChecks we are improving our editor to display the "health" of a translation to the translator. Essential information can now be passed on to be displayed in the editing environment, increasing the degree of context a translator has to his or her disposal when working on a job.

Currently we support the following types of "checks", as we call them, that a project owner can define:

min/max: These checks are pretty simple, they verify the number of characters of a translation. It is possible to define absolute numbers (e.g. min: 45), absolute offset (e.g. min: -5) and percentage offset (e.g. min: %5). Such checks are especially useful on Mobile Devices where the space is often limited. A translator will then know, for example, that a certain translation text should not exceed a certain length, otherwise it will not look pretty on the finished product.

placeholder: Many translations contain so called "placeholders". These, as the name suggests, are replaced with dynamic content at runtime (of the app or website). A simple example would be: "Hello %{username}". In this case username could be replaced with First Name, e.g. Claudia, and would result in "Hello Claudia". The corresponding German translation would be: "Hallo %{username}" The problem here is, that placeholders have a different syntax depending on the file format and they must be exactly the same as in the source language. With lingoChecks we ensure that all placeholders are valid and occur in all languages. This decreases the occurrence of post-translation bugs and increases both quality as well as consistency.

terms: This check is about special terms you always want to be the same across all languages, and they work as exceptions. An example would be the name/term "lingohub". This term should be all lower case and should be used in all languages (and not translated) identically. You can define such terms and make sure that the translators know that these terms should be exactly as defined. In most cases those are names, fixed expressions or slogans that need to remain the same.

lingoChecks can be enabled on a project level to set default, but can be overridden on a translation level. As a project owner you will find the settings under project settings and under the translation detail view. The only lingoCheck that is enabled per default is the placeholder, others have to be manually activated.

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