Dynamic Translations in NewYork

[Ankur Bawiskar]

Dynamic Translation is a new feature introduced in New York release. In previous releases, developers and admins would have to create a custom solution or refer to third-party resources if they wanted to translate any dynamically-generated text in an application..

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/orlando-release-notes/page/release-notes/now-platform-administration/dynamic-translation-rn.html

Scenario:
- Consider an use case where the ServiceNow instance has users that includes different countries then it is likely that a need would arise to do some form of text translation such as field labels, choice values etc.
- Till NewYork release there was no way to translate dynamic user-entered text without building custom solution.

The newly introduced feature in NewYork will allow users to translate text on-the-fly with the click of a button. Users can translate dynamically-generated text without having to leave ServiceNow or even navigating away from the field itself.

It provides the ability to do the following tasks using translation service providers:

• Translate user-entered text from a source language to a target language
• Detect the language of the input text

Steps:

1. Enable Dynamic Translation plugin
2. Sign up and create an account with a translation service provider (For this blog IBM Watson is used)
3. Configure Dynamic Translation connection
4. Add dynamic translations to a field

By default, the following translation service providers are supported:

• IBM
• Microsoft
• Google (Note: Ensure that the Google Cloud Translator Service spoke is installed in ServiceNow Store.)

1) Enable Dynamic Translation Plugin: Enable the Dynamic Translation plugin [com.glide.dynamic_translation]. The plugin has a dependency on Flow Designer and Integration Hub so these will also be enabled if not already.

2) Create free IBM Watson account: Dynamic translation uses either Microsoft Azure/IBM Watson API/Google for translations. Register for one of these service providers. For this example, IBM Watson is used. It has limit of 1,000,000 Characters per Month for free

• Register for free account https://www.ibm.com/watson/services/language-translator/.
• Confirm your email login to IBM Cloud.
• In the search type language translator and select language translator-99. See screenshot below.
• You should be able to view the API Key and URL. See screenshot below.

3) Configure Dynamic Translation connection:

• In left navigation type “translator configurations”
• Set Active=True and Default=True for the record with name as IBM. See screenshot below.
• In left navigation type “credential aliases” and Select “IBMTranslation”
• On the “Connection” related list click “New”
• Enter Name e.g. IBM and the Connection URL. This is the API URL you receive from your IBM Cloud account. It can be different to the screenshot shown depending on your location. Save the record.
• Remain on the same record and select the magnifying glass on the Credentials field. Click New and select Basic Auth Credentials from the list.
• Name: IBM; User name: apikey; Password: your own IBM API key from step 2
• Submit and Save the connection record. See screenshot below.

4) Add dynamic translation to a field:

• Navigate to any form. Example, an incident form
• Right-click the required field and select Configure Dictionary.
• In the Attributes related list, click New.
• In the Dictionary Attribute form, fill the fields

1. Attribute - Dynamic Translation Enabled
2. Value - true

• A translation icon appears next to the field. The logged-in user can click this icon  to translate the text to the user's preferred language using the default translation service provider.
• For example purpose I have activated Spanish plugin and for user Abel Tuter the language has been set as Spanish.

Limitations:

1) Currently supports only the following field types:

1. String
2. String (Full UTF-8)
3. Multi Line Small Text Area
4. Wide Text

2) For Microsoft, the input text cannot have more than 5000 characters including spaces.
3) For IBM, the size of the input text cannot exceed 50KiB.
4) Dynamic Translation APIs do not support the following translations though the corresponding I18N plugins are activated:

1. Simplified Chinese Translations (not supported only for Microsoft)
2. Traditional Chinese Translations
3. Brazilian Portuguese Translations
4. French Canada Translations

Screenshots:

Thanks for reading the blog and do provide your inputs/suggestions if any.

Hope you find this article helpful. Don’t forget to Mark it Helpful, Bookmark.
Thanks,
Ankur Bawiskar

ServiceNow MVP 2020,2019,2018

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