How to translate your static email content

This guide will provide a basic overview of how to use Localize to translate the content of your emails, so that you can send emails to your users in their preferred language.

What you'll learn

• How to import your email content into Localize
• How to translate your email content using Localize
• How to get your translations back into your email file/template

Prerequisites

• You have created a project in your Localize dashboard
  • You might want to have a separate project, dedicated to translating your email content.
• You have email content in a file or template

Import your email content

In this guide we will use the Text Import feature in Localize to copy your email content into your dashboard where it can be translated.

You can either select the contents of the entire email and paste it in, or you could break up the email into separate pieces and repeat the following process.

1. Navigate to the Text Import page in your dashboard.
2. Select the HTML option.
3. Paste your email content into the text entry field.
4. Add a Custom Label
   a. We highly recommend that you add a custom label to all of your phrases in the email.
   b. This will allow you to more easily find all of the phrases for a specific email by using the Labels Filter.
   c. When adding your email content, surround it in an enclosing <div> and add a data-localize attribute which contains a custom label name.
   d. For example: <div data-localize=”welcome-email”>Your email content here...</div>
   e. You’ll create a new label name for each email that you translate.
5. Click the Add Phrases button.
6. Localize will parse your content into separate phrases (where appropriate) and will put them into your Pending bin in your dashboard.

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HTML vs Plain Text Email Content

You can paste in either plain text-based or HTML-based email content into the HTML text field.
If you paste in HTML content, Localize will parse the HTML and separate it into separate phrases in your dashboard.

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Dynamic Content

If you have some dynamic content in your email, you will want to add some <var> tags to identify the dynamic content. See the help docs here for more info.

• For example:
  <p>Hello Kirk!</p>
• You would edit this part of the HTML to be:
  <p>Hello <var username>Kirk</var>!</p>
• This will allow you to have only one copy of the phrase and translations to use for all users you are sending the email to.

Translate your content in Localize

Now that your phrases are in your Localize dashboard, it’s time to translate them!

1. Select the Pending bin.
2. Select all phrases from your email and move them to the Published bin.
   a. If you added a label in the steps above, you can find all phrases for your email by filtering your Pending bin using the label name you attached to the phrases.
3. If you have machine translations enabled, translations will be automatically generated.
4. If you want to have a human translate your email content you can:
   a. Order translations from one of our third-party providers.
   -- Read our documentation on ordering human translations.
   b. Have your own translators provide translations.

View and copy the translated email content

Now that the phrases have been translated, you will need to copy-and-paste the translations out of Localize and into your email file/template.

1. Select the Published bin.
2. Filter using the label created for this email (if applicable).
3. You can either copy-and-paste the translations for each phrase back into your email file/template, or you can select all relevant phrases and click the Export button to export them to a file using one of the supported file types.
4. You should now have an email file/template that contains the translated phrases for the current language.
5. Repeat for each language that you support

Additional tips for Translating Emails

• An alternate way to import your email content would be to use the File Import / Export feature.
• This would allow you to import your email content using any of the supported file types.