Tutorials for Magento and Joomla! - Yireo

Using Yireo BingTranslate for Magento

The Yireo BingTranslate module allows you to easily implement Bing Translate into Magento, without coding and without core-hacks. Instead of adding the translation every time at the frontend, this module allows you to store the translation in your backend. This tutorial shows you what you should do to implement Yireo BingTranslate into your site.

Get a Bing API-key

Bing Translate is an online service offered by Microsoft, and it can be used on any site - with the requirement to apply for an API key. The API key can be applied for on the Bing Developers website. 

Get the Yireo BingTranslate module

The Yireo BingTranslate module is for sale on our site. Once purchased, you can download the latest version of this extension at any time by navigating to your Yireo Account. The extension is only available in the form of a ZIP-file, and is not available through MagentoConnect.

Installing the Yireo BingTranslate module

Download the ZIP-file to your computer, extract all files and upload those files to the Magento root-folder using FTP or SSH. The ZIP-file contains the following folders which correspond with existing folders in Magento:

• app/etc/modules
• app/code/community
• app/design/adminhtml/base/default/layout
• app/design/adminhtml/base/default/templates

This extension does not modify your Magento frontend.

Refresh Magento caching

After uploading these files and folders to Magento, refresh the Magento cache. You can either do this from the Magento backend (System > Cache Management). You could also remove the entire var/cache folder through FTP or SSH to remove the cache manually - an option that works often better than the Magento backend.

Configuring the BingTranslate settings

Next, login to the Magento Admin Panel and browse to System > Configuration. Select the right scope (Store or Store View) to configure. Then navigate to Catalog > Catalog > Bing Translate. If this menu-option is not available, logout from the Magento Admin Panel and log back in again.

Within the configuration panel, you will need to configure the API Key as generated on the official Bing API website. As soon as you have entered a correct API-key, Bing Translate will be enabled in your backend.

Detecting the language

The Magento extension detects automatically the right languages: The language of the parent scope (the original text), and of the current scope (the translation). It also tries to detect whether the current text (in the current language) is already translated or not.

Original text (English)

Translated text (German)

Changing the button format

You can change the format of the button label, making it easier to understand what the module is doing. For instance, to see both the source language as well as the destination language, you can enter the following format:

Translate from $FROM to $TO

This will print for instance:

Translate from English to French

Why is the button greyed out?

A translation is always based on a source language and a destination language. The translate-button will be greyed out automatically when the locale / language of the current scope (either Global, Website or Store View) is matching the original scope.

• When you enter the Products overview in the Magento backend, the scope is set to Global. The scope-selection is set to Default values. Because there is point in translating the default language to the default language, the buttons are greyed out.
• When you change the scope to a Store View called English, which has the US/English locale configured for it, but when the US/English locale is also the default locale, again the same applies: It makes no sense to translate English to English.
• When you change the scope to a Store View called French, which has the French locale configured for it, while the default locale is English, then a translation is possible: The button will be usable, because the text can be translated from English to French.

Supporting languages

On the following site, you can find a listing of languages (plus their language-codes) that are supported by the Bing translation services. If a language that you want to have translated, is missing in this list, there's little we can do: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh456380.aspx

In some cases, the language-code offered by Magento (or actually the Zend Framework) differs from the language-code being asked by Bing. A good example is Chinese. Zend Framework delivers the language-code zh_CN (which is stripped to zh by this Yireo extension). However, Bing only understands the code zh-CHS.

In this case, manual configuration of the language-code is needed. Within the Magento backend, browse to the System Configuration and open up the section Catalog > BingTranslate. Make sure you choose the right scope (either the right Store or the right Store View). Enter as Manual language code the code listed by Bing.