The WebTranslateIt Blog

i18n news and Product Updates about WebTranslateIt

New features on WebTranslateIt

By Edouard on April 3, 2018

Hi there!

Spring is here (or is it? it doesn’t feel like it yet) and while most people in Málaga (where we’re based) were busy preparing everything for Semana Santa, we’ve been busy bees working on new features and bug fixes. Here are a few of these features and changes that we released recently.

Custom Locales for Teams

Do you use Custom Locales? Do you use Teams?

Then you will like this update, because you can now create teams of translators working on custom locales.

It all starts when inviting a new translator or language coordinator:

Set the custom locale in Teams and that’s it!

As usual, if you don’t already have this language in your project you will be invited to create a new project language which will be custom made as well.

WebHooks and logs on status changes

WebHooks are now fired and activity feed now logs all activity happening on translations, down to a single status change. It was previously fired and logged only if the text was changed. It is now easier to see what is happening in your project.

wti rubygem v.2.4.7 released

This minor version includes a fix for our SSL certificate and an option to deactivate SSL verification warnings. In your .wti file, add the line:

silence_errors: true

Move to Spain, Tax ID, VAT numbers, new invoices, …

WebTranslateIt.com is now a Spanish company. the months of February and March were also dedicated to preparing that move. As a result, you might have noticed that we send new invoices. Also, as we need to Know Our Customers™ better, we ask our customers more information, such as their billing address, Tax Number, VAT number (if they are a company based in the EU).

Estelle must have gotten in touch with you but if she hasn’t already, you can update your organization information on this page: https://webtranslateit.com/en/organizations/1-atelier-convivialite/edit

I hope you will like all these changes. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any questions, feedback or feature requests!

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A trip to NuMundo’s impact centers: regenerative living within everybody's reach

By Estelle on March 27, 2018

Today we are featuring another great project being translated on WebTranslateIt.com: NuMundo’s growing network of impact centers, connecting individuals around the world to places where they can live transformational experiences and learn the many different ways to lead a peaceful and eco-friendly life.

But what exactly is an impact center? It is a land based project that offers individual transformation, regenerative living education and strives to leave a positive local impact. An impact center could be an ecovillage, organic farm, yoga retreat center, or even a hostel.
Through their own exploration, NuMundo’s founders have found thousands of hubs globally that are examples of sustainable and holistic living, producing practical, low-cost solutions to the global climate crisis. These hubs incorporate ideals like community living, whole systems design, appropriate technology, seed banking, holistic health, and regenerative enterprise. Through NuNumdo’s platform, these impact centers are becoming more accessible to the world and easily share crucial information and resources.

Sara Johnstone, NuMundo Chief Operating Officer, tells us more about this great enterprise.

WTI: Who were the people who started NuMundo and what was their main motivation?
S.J.: NuMundo’s founders wanted to connect people to impact centers around the globe. As world travellers who came together in intentional communities in Central America, they realized they were all relying on word of mouth to find alternative destinations, most of which were not on any search engines or travel sites. They shared a vision of a decentralized digital network that would empower travellers to discover paradisiacal, “off the grid” locations. And so NuMundo was born.

PLURITY - Project Nuevo Mundo's Earth Odyssey - Vision I from NuMundo on Vimeo.

WTI: I’ve read all of the main participants still have jobs on the side, does it mean the platform was entirely created by volunteers? How many people are now working on it or volunteering and how do you finance the project?
S.J.: NuMundo has been co-created by dozens of committed, passionate, values-aligned contributors. Some of those who have contributed for a year or more have earned equity in the project.
We currently have three people working full-time, and another ten part-time.


NuMundo team gathering. Time offline (“AFK - away from keyboard”) is just as important as time online.

To finance our vision, we have been mostly bootstrapped, crowdfunded with Indiegogo, received a small angel investment, a grant from the Chilean government’s Startup Chile accelerator program and driven revenue through platform bookings and event production.

In addition, over fifty NuMundo “ambassadors” play central roles in expanding and nurturing our global community.


NuMundo ambassadors play a critical role in the NuMundo network.

WTI: You have more than 390 centers registered, is this number growing and what process do the centers have to go through to get registered?
S.J.: NuMundo is growing organically at about two to four centers a week with little active effort to expand our database. At present, we have passed the 400 mark! Aspiring impact centers must fill out a profile and submit to publish on our platform, at which point one of our team members reviews the profile and makes sure it’s a fit. If so, they join our network.


NuMundo team practicing yoga at our Costa Rica NuBase, Finca Morpho.

WTI: Is the activity on your platform increasing? If so, why do you think a growing number of people seems to be seeking this kind of experience?
S.J.: Yes. We believe more and more people are seeking passion, purpose, and fulfillment in life and work. In our disconnected modern world, survivors of unsustainable urban lifestyles are increasingly striving to live in alignment with natural cycles—eating healthy, organic food, embracing conscious practices for mental and physical well-being, developing at the personal and professional level, reconnecting with nature, spending meaningful time on self-discovery in supportive co-living environments, and cultivating community.


NuMundo team members practicing acro-yoga.

WTI: If I were interested in spending time in one of NuMundo’s impact centers how should I proceed?
S.J.: If you’re interested in spending time at an impact center, you can check our network here and see our experiences here. Some of our centers offer work trade options or paid stays, which can be booked directly through the site. We also have many centers that you must contact directly to arrange your visit.


Numundo center Rancho Mastatal’s bamboo house Tiburon.

WTI: The NuMundo platform has already been translated from English to Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese, may I ask why these languages in particular? And do you intend to have it translated into other languages and can you tell us how WebTranslateIt has helped you along the way?
S.J.: Our platform was created in Central America. This is where our founders were living and where they first connected with each other. This is where our network is the strongest, and so translating into Spanish was a priority. Our CTO is from Portugal, and we have a partnership with a Japanese intentional community network.
We’re planning to integrate French and German at some point, as we grow our presence in Europe and elsewhere in the world. Using WebTranslateit for translations has been a great experience, and the tool has all the features we’ve needed so far. Especially when translating to Japanese, as we could lead discussions with the local team of translators directly in each segment, making it easy to find clarity and successfully complete complex translations. We’ve also had good experiences with onboarding translators, who have had no problems using the interface, giving us good feedback about the process and their user experience using the dashboard.

WTI: What is the next step for NuMundo?
S.J.: It is our dream to sustainably work full-time on this platform! This is why we’re exploring ways to monetize the platform through memberships, booking fees, marketing services and event production. As an organization, we are dedicated to growing the new regenerative culture and revolutionize value creation. We are passionate about building new decentralized economic and social systems.
Most recently, this has meant utilizing blockchain technology in the development of our own cryptocurrency token, NuCoin. In our pursuit of financial sustainability and ecological lifestyle, we’re always seeking that perfect synergy between revenue generation and integrity. No matter what challenges we face, we are dedicated first and foremost to our mission.


If you want to help out NuMundo in their inspiring adventure don’t hesitate to Get Involved.


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New in WebTranslateIt: Ability to sort files in the File Manager

By Edouard on March 15, 2018

Hi there,

We released a small new feature on WebTranslateIt today: the ability to sort files in the File Manager.

By default files are listed by file name, now you can also filter by size (which is basically sorting out by the amount of segments in a file) or by the date the file was last updated, which is useful to detect stale files in very large projects with many files.

Each of these sorting options can be listed in ascending or descending order.

I hope you will find this improvement useful. Thank you for using WebTranslateIt!


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New in WebTranslateIt: Ability to disable suggestions

By Edouard on March 1, 2018

We just released an update to WebTranslateIt so you can now disable suggestions. You can do this at a project-level or user-level.

As manager: disable translation suggestions for all translators on a project

As a manager, sometimes you want to control if your translators can reuse translations from other projects, or if they should translate everything from scratch.

You can now choose if translators should receive suggestions in the project settings.

As a user: disable your own suggestions

You can now simply disable suggestions in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. Select “Disable Suggestions”.

I hope you will find this new feature useful. Thank you for using WebTranslateIt.


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How can translation agencies make the most of online localization platforms? Jan Hinrichs from Beluga Linguistics sheds some light on the subject.

By Estelle on January 16, 2018

Jan Hinrichs, Founder and CEO at Beluga Linguistics

WTI: What gave you interest in the translation business and for how long have you been running a translation agency?
J.H.: I came to translation through my work at XING, a company my brother founded back in 2004. I helped him to translate the website into Spanish first and in the two following years I was actively involved in the management of the translation process into another 15 languages and as a country manager for Spain. In 2006, in agreement with XING’s management, my wife and I founded Beluga after realising that we could run the translation part better as a standalone company.

WTI: Can you tell us what kind of companies your are mainly working with?
J.H.: With XING as our first client we moved ahead and were lucky enough to get in touch over the years with companies like Last.fm, Moo, Bebo, Lookout, Swatch, MyTaxi, Tinder, Adroll and other high profile companies from tech and global brands. Our experience in setting up and running translation teams for fast moving companies has been a perfect match for businesses with ongoing translation needs for their digital content.

WTI: You are specialized in software translation. Which kind of software are you mainly working on?
J.H.: Apps, websites, blogs, dashboards, help center, emails, support content, etc.

WTI: You are our oldest customer, when did you start thinking about using an online localization tool?
J.H.: Online translation tools have been key for companies with ongoing translation workflows ever since SaaS was invented. Social networks spearheaded this development.
At XING we had built up a homegrown editor which helped us to scale easily and run daily updates. When we on-boarded new clients later on, we found ourselves building up editors with our clients internal staff again and again. It was very time consuming and the success depended heavily on the resources our clients were able/willing to dedicate to the process. It was time to get an independent third party tool in the middle.
We briefly launched an open source editor called FIT but this project unfortunately died because of lack of volunteers. 
Through Last.fm - which was our third client back in 2006 and who’ve been trusting us for more than a decade with their localization process - we got to know Edouard, who at the time worked at Last.fm and helped us get the editor working there. When we pitched him to join the project he came up with a better idea: WebTranslateIt! We were lucky enough to be the first ones to benefit from his unique skills and could roll out many projects through this platform.

WTI: How did WTI improve the translation process for you?
J.H.: The support and responsiveness of the WTI team has been just great and has allowed us to solve obstacles in our projects within no time. We can easily set up projects for our clients without any technical personnel involved. When technical knowhow is needed and we can’t help any more the WTI team is always there to solve potential issues.

WTI: How exactly do you use WTI? Do you centralize all of the projects of your customers? Or do you have them open their own account and then handle the translation process for them through their account?
J.H.: We usually help our clients to open their own accounts and onboard ourselves as managers within their account to help them with the setting up. While they connect via api with their repositories we manage the human part of the process.

WTI: What kind of feedback do your translators give you about WTI?
J.H.: WTI is one of those editors that is easy to use, stable and that gives translators most of the things they need. Something what we do miss a bit at WTI is a segmentation on a sentence level to process fuzzy matches better. Currently there are only suggestions but the stats do not bear them in mind.

WTI: And we will certainly be working on that. Because of the way we communicate on diverse media and platforms, the content that must be localized is always evolving and needs to be turned around rapidly, do you have a lot of customers using WTI to provide continuous delivery in localization and what do they think of the process?
J.H.: 90% of our projects are ongoing projects that require a platform like WTI and thanks to the synchronisation tool the process is pretty smooth.

WTI: A growing trend to meet the challenges of the localization of constantly evolving content is machine translation post-editing (MTPE), our platform allows its use as well. Do you rely a lot on MTPE or do you prefer to have translators issue a first translation before proofreading?
J.H.: Machine translation has made a major step forward a year ago when Google launched their Neural Machine Translation (NMT) engine. We have seen a big jump in quality. We can’t use MT for everything but it is already a great help to speed up translation work. We usually enable MT results to be shown in the suggestions from WTI. The translators can then decide if they want to use them or not. Paired with adaptive NMT translators get more productive and can do more in less time.
It is important to understand as well that MT can help translate content that couldn’t be translated by human translators because of time or cost constraints (Microsoft or the EU have been working with MT for years because of the vast amounts of content they need to publish). Today Neural Machine Translation engines do offer in certain contexts very good results a human only need to edit slightly. I believe that in near future many initial translations will mostly be done by NMT and human translators will concentrate on post editing and higher level translations with more impact.

Do you need professional help translating your website, software or app? Or simply want to stay tuned to Jan’s outlook on translation and localization? Follow him on: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Medium.


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