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When items are added to a translation job and sent for translation via Translation Manager, appropriate target (children) items are checked out and localized (waiting for the translated content).

Does anything happen to the parent items in the source publications? Authors might not want to update them while waiting for translation (to ensure the source content and target translations are in sync), but are the items actually locked while the translation job is in translation?

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2 Answers 2

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Translation Manager will never perform a checkout (which I assume is what you refer to as a lock) of the source item.

It will only attempt to checkout (and if needed, first localize) the target item, but if this fails it will not prevent the job from being sent (it will obviously give problems on retrieval if it still can't check the item out at that time).

It is possible to make a event handler checking out the source item. Using the core event system would probably be the easy way to do it.

  1. Hook into the checkin/checkout events
  2. Verify it's Translation Manager performing the action (it identifies itself to the session).
  3. If it is a checkout, perform a checkout of the source item (unless it is already checked out).
  4. If it is a checkin, verify if any of the other available target items are checked out by the TM user. If no other item is checked out by the TM user, undo checkout of the source item. You probably want to run this async as checking the state of the other items could be time consuming.

You can simply have an XML file with the publication IDs required to determine source/targets, or make it a bit more future proof (but also more complex) by using Translation Manager API to access the configuration.

Translation Manager is aware if items are in sync or not. It will display this information on the Info tab of the item, and use this information if the checkbox "Include already translated items" is not checked. But obviously this requires the user to go looking for the information, which might not be sufficient.

An approach would be to make a UI extension that shows a warning if the item being opened is currently out for translation. The information needed to determine this is in the item XML being send to the UI, but I do not know if there is a supported way to access this information in the XML.

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  • Thanks much for the clarification, Lars. Good catch, I meant checked out; I've updated the question and removed "lock." The discussion came up when someone asked if Tridion's checkout is the same status that translated items go through. I understood it to be "yes," but there was a question about the source, parent items being checked out, which didn't sound familiar. The discussion about what "localize" meant was also interesting. ;-)
    – Alvin Reyes
    May 1, 2013 at 13:35
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I believe these are still available to be modified, but i think this makes sense in terms of content workflow.

  1. Source content is created and completed
  2. It is then sent off as part of the translation process - content is a snapshot at the time of sending
  3. The parent is able to be modified - these modifications can be resent as a new job?
  4. Completed translation jobs are imported into child components.
  5. Jobs-a-good-un'

You wouldn't want to lock completed content for the duration of localization... what if some markets didn't bother to complete it, leaving authors trapped with checked out content.

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