Configuring Machine Translation Adapters

Before you can use machine translation, you must configure the adapter in the Management > Linguistic Tool Setup > Machine Translation Configurations page. Click Add in the row for the adapter you want to configure. In the configuration page that is displayed, you need to specify information that depends on the adapter you are configuring. Before leaving the configuration page, you can also test if your configuration works.

SDL BeGlobal Configuration

The SDL BeGlobal adapter requires the following:

A name
A description
A URL to which WorldServer can connect to perform lookups (not required by the pseudotranslator adapters)
(SDL BeGlobal) Job name
(SDL BeGlobal) Account ID for the Translation on Demand (ToD) account
(SDL BeGlobal) User ID for the ToD user
(SDL BeGlobal) API Key for the ToD account
(SDL BeGlobal) Touchpoint ID used for translations
A score that you want WorldServer to assign to all matches, which you can use when determining whether to use the machine translation or the translation memory translation. (not required by SDL BeGlobal).
A translation request size – the number of segments that can be sent for machine translation during one try. By default, 10000 segments are sent during one try, but you can modify this value whenever you need.
A retry count – the number of retries in case the initial translation attempt fails. By default, the system tries again 5 times. If the request fails every time, it stops and a message is displayed.
A wait before retry option – the time between each retry attempt, expressed in milliseconds. By default, the system waits for 500 milliseconds, but you can modify this value whenever you need.

Note: Starting with WorldServer 11.3, the SDL BeGlobal adapter contains several enhancements related to the metadata sent over the REST API. To benefit from these enhancements, remove your current version of the SDL BeGlobal adapter and add the latest one. You can find the latest version in the WorldServer distribution archive.

SDL Language Cloud Configuration

The SDL Language Cloud adapter requires the following:

A name
A description
A score that you want WorldServer to assign to all matches, which you can use when determining whether to use the translation provided by machine translation or by a translation memory
(SDL Language Cloud) API URL that you obtain based on your Language Cloud account
(SDL Language Cloud) API Key for the ToD account
(SDL Language Cloud) An engine type; you can choose between Vertical, Baseline, and Custom; for more information about the differences between them, please refer to the SDL Language Cloud documentation
Map the SDL WorldServer language with the SDL Language Cloud language

Apart from the settings that you can configure, there are also certain background settings that are not displayed on the Language Cloud adapter configuration page and that you cannot modify. These settings are:

Translation request size – the number of segments that can be sent for machine translation during one try. By default, 10000 segments are sent during one try.
Retry count – the number of retries in case the initial translation attempt fails. By default, the system tries again 5 times. If the request fails every time, it stops and a message is displayed.
Wait before retry – the time between each retry attempt, expressed in milliseconds. By default, the system waits for 500 milliseconds.

Tip: The Engine Type and Engines boxes become available only after you save a configuration without them. After that, you can select an engine type and one or more engines for each configuration. To save them within the same configuration that you saved before, click Save. To save them as part of a new configuration, change the name of the configuration, and then click Save As New. Thus, from the same Language Cloud Adapter dialog box, you can create as many configurations as you need.

Important: To identify locales, WorldServer uses a combination of ISO 639 two-letter culture codes and ISO 3166 two-letter codes associated with a country or region, separated by a hyphen (for example, en-us). However, Language Cloud uses ISO 639-2/T or ISO 639-2/B three-letter language codes (for example, eng). The Language Cloud adapter uses the Language Cloud service to obtain the matching codes, but, in some cases, this might not work. To change a pair of mapped codes, in the exchange.properties file, add a new entry according to the following pattern:

lcLocaleMapping<identifier>=<ws-code>,<lc-code>

where <identifier> is a unique numeric identifier, <ws-code> is the combination of codes used by WorldServer, and <lc-code> is the three-letter language code used by Language Cloud. For example, lcLocaleMapping2=en-us, eng.

Test the Configuration

To test if a configuration works, click the Save and Test button to display the Machine Text Translator page.

Select an MT adapter configuration to use.
Select the source and target languages.
Type the text to translate in the source language column and click the Translate button.

If your configuration is correct, the first translation found by the MT adapter is displayed.

This option is not available in the case of the Language Cloud adapter, because the configuration is tested automatically when you save it.

SDL BeGlobal Additional Configuration

After you create and test an initial SDL BeGlobal configuration, you must also do the following:

Select a language pair for the user that is logged in.
Select whether or not you want support for placeholders.
Enter an effective fuzzy score.