SFDC Language Translation

Question

What is the best way to deploy Language translations ? I can extract the source file from translation workbench in an excel file, but there might be chances that excel might skip double byte characters from languages like Chinese / Japanese, etc. Is there an easier way to deploy the translations using XML files from eclipse ?

Answer 1

Yes, you can retrieve/deploy the xml configuration files for translations. Salesforce had published a pdf on the topic called "Localizing with the Force.com IDE," which is a great reference if you can track it down.

Basically, what you want to do is set up your package.xml file to list both the the metadata that you want to translate and the translations for them. Note that if you retrieve Translations or CustomObjectTranslations by themselves, they will come back blank.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Package xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata">
    <types> 
        <members>CustomLabel</members>
        <name>CustomLabel</name>
    </types>
    <types> 
        <members>Account</members>
        <name>CustomObject</name>
    </types>
    <types> 
        <members>Account-en_US</members>
        <name>CustomObjectTranslation</name>
    </types>
    <types> 
        <members>en_US</members>
        <name>Translations</name>
    </types>
    <version>37.0</version>
</Package>

Then all you have to do is replace the <!-- comments --> with your translations and redeploy back into the system.