The main screen
To follow this short tour click on Open Example Project. The example project will open with a screen similar to the one below.
If you don't want to use the example project and start with your framework directly you have to configure your languages first.
The screen has 2 main areas
- translation tree view or translation list on the left side
- edit area on the right side
Translation view (left side)
The translation view shows all your translation IDs as a tree view or list. You can toggle the display using the icon right of Translation IDs.
The IDs are displayed in a tree if possible — which means that they are either already
structured in a tree in your translation files or look similar to identifiers
separated by dots (.). E.g. form.password.label.
A flat list is displayed if you use plain text for your IDs. e.g. "Hello world!": "Hallo Welt!".
Selecting an ID or folder in the view displays the translations on the right side for editing.
Use the right mouse or CTRL + left mouse (MacOS) on a translation ID to display the context menu with function like rename, move, copy and more.
(No) drag & drop in the tree
Sometimes users ask us why we don't add drag & drop functionality to BabelEdit's tree view.
We omitted this on purpose. The reason is that you can easily do the same with Copy & paste or the Move to and Copy to from the context menu on a selection. Using these is a deliberate action.
We assume that users more often want to select than move items. Drag & drop could easily trigger renames by accident which you might notice way later.
Translation editor (center view)
Editing translations
Each translation is displayed in 3 blocks:
- The heading with the translation ID
- The comment area (editable by using the notepad-icon on the right)
- The translations
BabelEdit displays all languages at once to give you an overview over the different translations. This makes it easier to be consistent across all your translations.
Translations are automatically spell-checked. Use right mouse or CTRL + left mouse (MacOS) over an underlined word to correct or ignore it.
The approved flag on the right is a help for you to know which translations are considered final or not.
Tool area at the bottom
You can enable 2 tools at the bottom of the center area:
Source code view (right side)
The source code view shows you where the current translation is used in your project. The source code files must be accessible from BabelEdit.
BabelEdit tries to detect your source root when you create the project. If this fails, you can manually set the root folder in Project Configuration
Similar Phrases
BabelEdit helps you speed up your work by showing similar phrases. This feature scans your existing translations and suggests phrases where the same or similar words have already been used — so you can stay consistent without retyping or re-thinking translations.
To activate Similar Phrases, simply click on the icon in the bottom right corner of BabelEdit:
A pane will open at the bottom of the center view, displaying other phrases from your project that match or resemble the one you are currently working on.
Suggestions
BabelEdit can display translation suggestions for the current text using DeepL, Google or Microsoft Translate. Enable this feature by clicking on the button in the bottom right corner of BabelEdit.
Please be aware that your translations are sent to external services for translation, consult the section Privacy & what happens to your data in our documentation for details. Please be also aware that we can't offer this feature without limits due to the costs we have to pay for the translations service ourselves, see The cost for machine translation
Primary language
The primary language defines which language is used as the source for machine translation suggestions and for features that compare translations. You can set this in the Configure Languages dialog.
Configure languages dialog
Open the Configure Languages dialog from the main menu to add, remove, or reorder languages and set the primary language for your project.
BabelEdit uses the primary language that you can set in the configure languages dialog as source language for the translations.
Use the shortcut CTRL+number (Windows) or CMD+number (Mac) to replace the current translation text with the suggestion. You can also click on the translation text.
If you want to translate many texts at once use the pre-translate feature.