Multilingual Content
A multilingual digital guide is a powerful tool that helps you reach a wide audience and engage with visitors from all over the world. To support global engagement and accessibility, Bloomberg Connects is integrated with Google Translate so the app's controls and your guide's content are automatically available in 40+ languages.
If your organization can provide human translations via in-house or third-party translation services, you can add these translations directly to objects in the CMS to overwrite the Google Translate content.
New organizations are automatically enabled for Google Translate. If your organization needs to opt out of the Google Translate integration, reach out to your relationship manager.
Choosing a Language in the App
Users choose their preferred language on a guide-by-guide basis on the Start Guide screen.
When any language other than the guide's default language is selected, a disclaimer lets the user know that:
- Some content in the guide may be provided by Google Translate.
- Any content not yet available in the selected language will appear in the guide's default language.
This disclaimer helps set visitors' expectations around the content they'll see.
The Bloomberg Connects app can detect a user's device language and selects that language automatically. If the user's device is set to a language that Bloomberg Connects does not yet support, the guide's default language is selected.
Translation Logic
Most of the content in your guide can be translated automatically, but there are some exceptions.
Though your guide can include a mix of automated and human translations, a single piece of content cannot.
If you partially translate a piece of content (like an Item), any fields without a human translation will be blank in the app. For example, if your Item has a title and description in English and you provide a human translation for the title in Spanish, a Spanish app user will only see the title and will not see the description at all.
Partner-Provided Guide Content
Automated Translations Available:
- Exhibitions
- Items
- Images (including alt text)
- Creators
- Audios (text only, not the audio file)
- Videos (text only, not the video file or subtitles/captions file)
- Organization description
- Home screen section names
Automated Translations Not Available:
- Media files (e.g., MP3 or MP4 file)*
- Video caption/subtitles*
- Related content relationship types
- Map location pin names
- Map images with embedded labels
- Organization formal and friendly names
- Addresses
- Dates
* You can manually add translated versions of your media files and captions/subtitles.
App Controls
Automated Translations Available
- Navigation controls (e.g., Home)
- Standard field names (e.g., Description)
- App-level headers (e.g., Related, Items in This Exhibition)
Automated Translations Not Available
- n/a
Adding Human Translated Content in the CMS
While Google Translate is a valuable tool for providing multilingual content quickly and at scale, automated translations are not always perfect and can lack the nuance and sensitivity of a human translation. In Bloomberg Connects, you can overwrite any Google Translate translation with your own custom, human translation to make sure you stay in control of your stories.
Your guide can include a mix of Google Translate and human translations. For example, if you invest in a human translator to support a major Exhibition in few languages that are important to your community, you can add your custom translations for that Exhibition's content and let Google Translate handle the rest of your guide (and the rest of the languages).
Though your guide can include a mix of automated and human translations, a single piece of content cannot.
If you partially translate a piece of content (like an Item), any fields without a human translation will be blank in the app. For example, if your Item has a title and description in English and you provide a human translation for the title in Spanish, a Spanish app user will only see the title and will not see the description at all.
The following topic explains how to provide your own translations.
Part 1: Translating Content
Steps
From the language drop-down menu at the top of any content template, select Add Translation.
Select the language for which you want to add translated content (e.g., Chinese (Simplified, Mandarin)), then click Add.
In the blue editable fields that appear, enter the translated files, content, and/or metadata. You must enter translations in all blue fields or the fields will not appear in the app at all.
Note: Some fields (e.g., Display Period) do not support translation and are inactive. Linked objects, like media files and related content, can only be translated in the source object.
- Click Save.
Part 2: Expose Custom Translations in the App
Steps
On the About page, under Languages, click Edit.
In the Edit Languages window that appears, select the language(s) for which you have provided translated content.
- Click Save.
- If you are editing the draft version of your guide, publish your draft to expose your translations (overwriting the automated Google Translate translations where relevant).
Previewing Translations in the App
You can use the Bloomberg Connects app’s internal mode to preview translated content, just like how you would preview any other content changes in your guide. For more, see Previewing Draft Content in the App.
You can preview:
- Custom translations saved in your draft version.
- Google Translate translations of content saved in your draft version.
Changes made to translated content in the live version of your guide are made public immediately.