Localization with pivot languages
A pivot language is an intermediate language that is used when a direct translation from the source language to the target language is not available.
You may need a pivot language when your translation vendor does not offer a direct translation from your source language or it is too costly to perform a direct translation. For example, you want to localize content into Arabic from Japanese, but your translation vendor does not offer Japanese to Arabic (or it is too expensive). However, they do offer Japanese to English and English to Arabic. You can use English as a pivot language, so you can create a sequence to localize Japanese into English and then English into Arabic.
You configure pivot localization by defining all the source and pivot languages and their target languages in the pivotLanguages.xml file. In this file the pivot language is treated like just another source language. As a result, the options available when you localize an object and select are limited to the target languages configured and available for that source language.
Process for pivot language localization
When pivot language localization is enabled, the System Administrator configures which pivot languages can be localized into which target languages. Although an object can be localized in any available language, once an object has been localized from a pivot language, you cannot shortcut its localization sequence. For example, if you have localized a map and its child objects from Japanese to English to Arabic, you cannot update that map and its child objects from Japanese directly to Arabic.
When a source object is translated into a language for the first time, the system creates a new object in the target language (referred to as a language object). A language object has its own Revision number as well as an Authoring Revision property, which stores the revision number of the source object when it was sent for translation.
With pivot language localization, the source object is not necessarily in the Authoring cycle. For example, if you have localized from Japanese to English to Arabic to Indonesian, the revision number stored as the Authoring Revision for the Indonesian language object comes from its source object (the Arabic language object), not the originally authored content (the Japanese object).
Things to consider
Choose your pivot languages carefully. The configuration choices you make will have far-reaching and long-term effects on your content:
- Consider the long-term translation cycle. Once an object has been localized from a pivot language, you cannot shortcut the sequence using a different localization sequence. For example, if you have localized a map and its child objects from Japanese to English to Arabic, you cannot go through the cycle of updating that map and its child objects from Japanese directly to Arabic.
- Once a map has been localized using a particular localization sequence, it and its child objects cannot be translated back into any of the languages already used in the localization sequence. For example, if you have localized a map and its child objects from Japanese to English to Arabic, you cannot localize from Arabic back to English or Japanese. When you select , your choices will be limited to the available target languages configured in the pivotLanguages.xml file minus the languages already used in the localization sequence.
- Consider where objects will be shared and reused. You cannot mix objects that were localized using different sequences in the same map. For example, if you have configured a sequence of Japanese to English to Arabic and also a sequence of French to Arabic, you cannot mix topics localized using the Japanese to English to Arabic sequence in a map containing topics localized using the French to Arabic sequence.