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Translation and IBM Documentation
IBM Docs translation strategy targets language, not region. For example, content is available in Spanish to reach US Spanish speakers. In that case our English content and Spanish content are targeting the same region—the USA—but different languages.
Within our URL, ibm.com/nl/product/title.html, the NL represents the language in which the content is translated. By default, the language parameter is en. When a customer uses the language selector, located on every page of ibm.com/docs/en, both the IBM docs platform (labels, messages, etc.) will display in that language and if content exists for that language, the content will display. If content does not exist for the selected language, then the logic automatically reverts to the en language parameter for the product documentation.
Auto machine translation
IBM Docs supports both human translation (HT) and auto-machine translation (MT). MT is the primary method of translating product documentation for IBM Docs. The Auto-MT process provides the best combination of quality, speed, and automation to deliver translated documentation for.
The primary reasons for using the Auto-MT process are as follows:
- Translate content for all users so that they can understand documentation better and get immediate help in solving issues.
- Enable continuous delivery of translated content.
The MT process uses IBM Watson Machine Learning and any previous translation memories when translating the HTML files. not change. The MT process translates the HTML and SVG files into the following languages:
- Brazilian Portuguese (pt-br)
- French (fr)
- Italian (it)
- German (de)
- Spanish (es)
- Simplified Chinese (zh-tw)
- Traditional Chinese (zh-ch)
- Japanese (ja)
- Korean (ko)
- Czech (cs)
- Polish (pl)
- Turkish (tr)
Not all product documentation is MT. If content has gone through the MT process, IBM Documentation displays a banner at the top of the documentation that states that the content has gone through auto MT. You can click on a link to revert to English at any time. You can, and are encouraged, to provide feedback on the translation by rating the content by clicking on the thumbs up or thumbs down icons.
Site translation support
IBM Documentation platform UI and messages have been translated into the following languages:
- Arabic
- Bulgarian
- Bosnian
- Czech
- Danish
- German
- Greek
- English
- Spanish
- Finnish
- French
- Croatian
- Hungarian
- Italian
- Hebrew
- Japanese
- Korean
- Kazakh
- Dutch
- Norwegian
- Polish
- Portuguese/Portugal
- Portuguese/Brazil
- Romanian
- Russian
- Slovak
- Slovenian
- Serbian
- Swedish
- Turkish
- Vietnamese
- Chinese Simplified
- Chinese Traditional
Note: these are the languages that the IBM Documentation site framework is translated into. These do not mean that the product documentation is also translated. Content translation is managed by each product offering team.