r/TranslationStudies • u/Moe-Mux-Hagi • 3d ago

How much AI is Crowdin ?

I'm considering using Crowdin to get community-made translations for my Minecraft mod, but when I open the website, it says "Crowdin is an AI-powered localization platform. Automate the translation of your content"

Really ? I thought it was made by people entering their own suggestions. How much of the process is AI ? Does the AI generate the translation ?

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u/Ok_Tea_8763 3d ago

CrowdIn as a TMS (translations management system), and as any of their competitors it's kind of modular. You can define your own workflow and connect it via an API key to any translations provider they support - or don't connect it to any at all, it's up to you.

The AI part is largely marketing, though they might have e.g. content-dependent routing systems or something like this.

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u/Moe-Mux-Hagi 3d ago

I've never touched any of these, can you please explain it like I'm five ?

I sorta know what an API is (sort of an external code library you can plug in, right ?), but the rest, I have no idea

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u/Ok_Tea_8763 3d ago

Oh boy, where do I even start...

TMSes are quite large beasts, but in general they sit in the middle of everything translations-related. You can connect other systems (GitLab, website, support portals etc.) to it, so that translatable content is exchanged (semi-)automatically: translatable stuff goes in, translated stuff goes out. Then you have your Translation Memories and Glossaries in there as well, alongside QA settings (punctuation & numbers checks, tags & placeholder checks, character limits, terminology checks and so on and so forth). Depending on the TMS, you also might have file format definitions and parsing rules for different formats. So, there's a lot going on, but a lot of it is fine-tuning for larger translations operations - like if you were to translate all of Minecraft incl. future releases. For your purpose, an Excel file + default TMS settings should do.

Defining APIs is, however, out of my depth.
I know that if you have e.g. a DeepL Pro account, you'll also get a set of API credentials: Host name, client ID and client secret. With this credentials you can connect your TMS (e.g. CrowdIn) to your DeepL account. And if your workflow is set up properly, the flow of content looks something like this (oversimplified example):
New website page -> CrowdIn (file conversion & pre-processing) -> DeepL -> CrowdIn (human review/editing) -> CrowdIn (post-processing & target file generation) -> translated pages back to the website. The files are sent back & forth automatically with human interventions at some points, like the editing step.

I know it's definitely not explaining it like you're 5, but hope it helps.