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Translate a field (tool_lang)

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Translate one text field of one record from a source language into a target language, with the source shown beside the target and one click to fill in an automatic translation.

What it's for

Dédalo stores every textual value once per language on the same field — the English, Spanish and Catalan versions of a Description all live on the one component. Keeping those parallel values in step normally means switching the whole record's interface language back and forth. tool_lang turns it into a focused, comparison-driven task: it opens a two-pane editor on a single field, source on the left, target on the right, and offers to fill the target automatically.

Concrete scenario: a museum publishes its Objects catalogue trilingually. A curator has written a long Description in Spanish, but the English version is empty. They open the translator on that field, set the source to Spanish and the target to English, pick a translation engine and press Automatic translation; the English draft appears and is saved on the field. They then switch the target to Catalan and repeat, lightly editing each draft in place.

When to use it

  • A record's text field needs a translated value in another language, edited with the source visible beside it.
  • You want a machine-translation first draft to correct, rather than typing from scratch.
  • You want to copy a source value verbatim into another language (for non-translatable strings, or as a hand-translation starting point).

Do not use it to translate a field into many languages in one pass — use Translate to many languages for that. It only works on text fields, and it translates one record at a time (there is no bulk-across-records action here).

Where to find it

The translator is attached to individual text fields, not to the section as a whole. On a field configured for it (long-text and short-text fields such as a Description or a title), a Translation button appears inline on the field's button bar. Click it to open the two-pane editor; the tool opens in its own window.

Using it, step by step

  1. Open the record and find the text field you want to translate.
  2. Click the field's Translation button. The two-pane editor opens.
  3. On the left, choose the source language — the value you are translating from. The source pane is read-only.
  4. On the right, choose the target language — the value you are translating into. This pane is editable.
  5. To fill the target automatically, pick a translation engine from the selector, then press Automatic translation. The engine produces the target value and it is saved on the field.
  6. To copy the source across instead, press Copy to target — the source text is written onto the target verbatim and saved.
  7. Review and correct the target text in place. Change the target language and repeat for each language you need.

Options

Control What it does
Source language The language you translate from; its value shows read-only on the left.
Target language The language you translate into; editable on the right, and where the result is saved.
Engine selector Chooses the translation engine — a server engine (Babel, Google) or a browser engine ("Local AI translator") that runs entirely in your browser.
Configuration (gear) For a browser engine, toggles a device option — a "more compatible, slower" checkbox that uses the CPU instead of the GPU.
Automatic translation Runs the selected engine and fills the target.
Copy to target Copies the source value into the target verbatim (no translation).

Which engines appear, and whether machine translation is available at all, depends on how your installation is configured. A server engine needs its service address and key set up by an administrator; the "Local AI translator" loads its model into your browser the first time you use it — from your own installation's model store, never from an internet service, so it works in an archive with no outside connection. An administrator seeds the store with the model (onnx-community/translategemma-text-4b-it-ONNX) the same way as the transcription models: from a machine with internet with scripts/fetch_ai_models.ts, or by copying the model folder in. Until it is seeded the engine reports that the model is not installed.

Tips and gotchas

Tip

Use Copy to target for values that should be identical across languages (proper names, codes) or as a clean starting point before hand-translating.

Tip

A machine translation is a draft. Always read it back in the target pane and correct it before moving on — cultural-heritage descriptions carry nuance an engine will miss.

Warning

Running Automatic translation overwrites whatever is currently in the target field with the engine's result. If the target already holds a hand-written value you want to keep, copy it somewhere safe first. Machine translation of a long text can take a while; leave the window open until it finishes.