Further development of DeepL Translate for TYPO3 - an outlook

The DeepL Translate extension for TYPO3 was released by TYPO3 agency web-vision in summer 2023 as an early access program in version 4 for TYPO311 and 12 LTS. Version 4 of DeepL Translate already includes an improved code base, glossary support and the "Activate Translated Content" add-on, which allows translated content elements to be released and published with one click.

In autumn 2023, the development of new functions for DeepL Translate for TYPO3 was conceived, the concepts were presented to selected early access partners, development funding was secured by bundling requirements and the specification was recorded and prioritized for development as part of requirements engineering.

Since December 2023, new functions such as mass translation, automatic translation,retranslation and translations for files for DeepL Translate for TYPO3 have been under development.

The automatic mass translation for DeepL Translate provides for the selection of individual pages, parts and even entire page trees from the TYPO3 page tree. Content pages are then placed in a queue. This allows complete content pages or data records to be automatically translated into alternative page languages at previously defined intervals.

The asynchronous processing is intended to ensure that the DeepL API is not overloaded and that the translation process can also take place outside of regular working hours.

Automatic translation with and without manual approval

The configuration for the automatic translation process provides for both pure translation with manual approval by editors and fully automatic translation with automatic approval without interaction.

With mass translation, even entire websites or TYPO3 multisites can be automatically translated into other languages within TYPO3 using DeepL Translate.

A dashboard widget is being developed so that editors and admins can see the editing status of the content pages or data records marked for mass translation, which also lists the data records and pages ready for publication.

The autotranslate function for the DeepL Translate extension is designed to automatically translate newly created content pages into previously defined alternative page languages using page configuration and without manual, editorial interaction.

This means that if a page is newly created in the original language German, for example, the alternative page languages English and French are automatically created in the background.

If new content elements are then created and saved on this page in the source language, DeepL Translate then automatically translates these into the alternative languages.

In the event that this behavior is not desired for individual pages or folders, a function is provided that can switch off the autotranslate function. This is particularly interesting for shared content that should not be translated, editorially translated content or legal information that does not require translation.

One of the most requested features for the DeepL Translate extension for TYPO3 has been the automatic retranslation of content.

A multilingual TYPO3 website usually has a default language or source language, which is selected either on the basis of the national language of the company or organization, or on the basis of the distribution among potential editors.

In most cases, the pages, content elements, news or other data records are first entered in this standard language and then subsequently translated into other languages. However, as the original content often evolves or is corrected and adapted over time, adapted translations are "forgotten" - the content between the source language and the translation continues to diverge. In the worst case scenario, the content in the standard language eventually no longer corresponds to the content of the translation.

Until now, there has been no permanent, valid solution to ensure that the original content and translation remain aligned. Editors have therefore often deleted all translated content at some point in order to then re-translate all content elements using DeepL Translate.

This is where the retranslate function comes in, which uses the link between the original content and the translation. If such a link already exists and the content is then adapted and saved in the source language, the linked translations will also be retranslated in future.

The retranslate function is currently designed as a configuration option in the page properties and as a save function.

With DeepL Translate for TYPO3, it is currently already possible to fully automatically translate embedded documents or images within a content element. This means that alt text, title text and captions are automatically available in translated content.

In future, TYPO3's Fileadmin module will offer the option of creating metadata for alternative languages or having it translated asynchronously in a mass translation. This means that all meta data for files will be available for the entire TYPO3 instance, regardless of how they are embedded and used.