Translate the catalog
This is the day-to-day loop: a queue of values that need a language, a draft to correct, and a state that moves. It is written for the person doing the translating and for whoever assigns the work.
The translation queue
The queue is every value that needs attention for a locale, filtered so it is a work list rather than a wall.
Filter it by, in roughly this order of usefulness:
- Attribute. Do all the
namevalues, then all theshort_descriptionvalues. Switching between field types costs more concentration than it looks. - State.
untranslated,machine,needs review. Different work, different speed. - Family or category. Translating 200 hexagon screws in one sitting is fast, because the vocabulary repeats. Translating 200 random products is not.
- Product priority. Your top articles by revenue first. See How catalog translation works.
Machine draft, then review
- Select a batch in the queue — one attribute, one family, a few hundred values.
- Generate machine drafts for the batch. They land in the
machinestate and are not published to buyers until reviewed, unless you have deliberately configured that for tail articles. - Work through the batch. For each value you see the source, the draft, and the glossary terms it contains.
- Approve, edit, or reject. Approving moves the value to
reviewed. - Save. Values become visible on the storefront after the next index update — seconds, normally.
What to correct, in the order it matters:
| Check | Why |
|---|---|
| Norm and standard designations | DIN 933 is DIN 933 everywhere. Machines translate them. |
| Material codes | V4A, 1.4571, A4 must survive intact |
| Dimensions and units | A machine will happily convert M8 into something else |
| Brand and product names | Do-not-translate list |
| Plural and gender | German compound nouns machine-translate into wrong-gender phrases constantly |
| Tone | Last. B2B buyers do not read for pleasure. |
Glossary and consistency
The glossary is the highest-leverage artefact in the whole area. It holds three kinds of entry:
- Do not translate — brand names, product line names, norm designations, material codes.
- Always translate as — your fixed term for a concept, per language. Verschraubung is one word in your catalog and must not be three in French.
- Never use — terms a previous supplier or an old agency used that you have moved away from.
Maintain it as you translate, not before. Every time you correct the same term twice, add it. Within a few weeks the machine drafts need visibly less work, and the value of that compounds across every language you add later.
One person owns it. A glossary maintained by everyone is a glossary with three entries for the same term.
Completeness per locale
Completeness answers "how ready is the French catalog?" and it is calculated per locale against what the family requires — see Channels, locales and completeness.
Read it two ways, and both are useful:
- Per locale, overall. French at 34% is a number you can report and track weekly.
- Per attribute, within a locale. "Which twelve attributes are missing across the 340 products that are not complete?" is the question that produces an afternoon's work rather than a project plan.
What to check
- Open the storefront in the locale and walk one category: navigation, listing, facets, product page. Facets still in the source language means option labels were missed — the highest-value strings in the catalog.
- Search three common terms in the new language. Compare the zero-result rate against the source language; see Search analytics.
- Spot-check ten reviewed values against their source for units and norms.
- Check the completeness number moved in the direction and by roughly the amount your batch should have moved it. If it did not, you translated attributes the family does not require.
Next
- Translation quality — the reports that keep this from rotting.
- Classify products