Translating knowledge articles to various locales

Automatic translation of knowledge articles helps incident or case agents quickly translate the published knowledge article in various languages, improving response times and ensuring consistent information across locales without manual translation effort.

The title, article content, and keywords of a published knowledge article are automatically translated into the selected locale. Service desk or case agents can view the live status of all translated articles associated with a parent article on a single window.

Automated translation capability offers:

• Simplified knowledge article lifecycle management.
• Ease of configuring your preferred locale.
• Ability to translate child articles.
• Flexibility to use your own translation tool.

Before you begin

• The administrator must enable automatic knowledge translation for your line of business. For more information, see Enabling automatic translation of knowledge articles.
• The incident or case agent must have write access to the source knowledge article. For more information, see Setting up roles and permissions.

To translate a source knowledge article

The source knowledge article is always in a locale supported by BMC Helix Innovation Suite Knowledge Management (ISKM). However, you can translate the article into any locale of your choice.
Perform the following steps to translate the knowledge article:

1. Log in to BMC Helix ITSM or BMC Helix Business Workflows. 

2. Navigate to (BMC Helix ITSM) Console > Knowledge Console or (BMC Helix Business Workflows) Workspace > Knowledge.

   By default, the Line of Business is selected for which you can revise an article.

3. Open the article from a Knowledge console.
4. To translate a published article, click Translate .
   The Translate Knowledge Article dialog box is displayed.
5. From the Available languages list, select the locales to which you want to translate articles.
   The following screenshot shows the locales selected for translation:
   
6. Click Translate.

You have translated the source knowledge article to various locales.

To view the knowledge article status and translation progress

1. Click the Show translations option, as shown in the following screenshot:
   
   
   The article status and translation status are displayed as shown in the following screenshot:
   
   
2. The following error is displayed if the translation fails: Error occurred in processing request for knowledge article translation.
   In the Action column, click Try again to restart the translation.
3. (Optional) To translate the article into more locales, click + Translation. 
   +Translation is disabled if the source knowledge article is not published or if any ongoing translation process is present. 
4. (Optional) To check the status of an article that is in the process of translation, click Refresh. 
5. To view the translated knowledge article, from the Action column, click Open.
6. (Optional) To view the source article, click Go to source.

The following screenshot shows the translated knowledge article:

Version control of translated knowledge articles

When you edit a parent knowledge article, a new version is created. You can translate the version if required. However, only one published version of each translation is allowed at any time.

Publishing a new version of a translated article automatically closes any other unpublished versions for that locale. Similarly, publishing any version of a translation will override all unpublished versions for that specific locale. When translating a new version, the system automatically selects the languages used in the previous version.

Example

You have a knowledge article translated into French and German. After editing the French version, you edit and publish the German version. Once published, the German version immediately becomes available for search.

Related topic

Developing knowledge articles