Translate cheat sheet

Common patterns and examples for using Translate.

Translate offers an interface to translate Sanity documents using large language models (LLMs). This document showcases a collection of common patterns and concepts.

Prerequisites:

• Complete the Translate quick start.
• @sanity/client v7.1.0 or higher and an environment to run client requests.
• API version vX or later for any requests using Generate.

Many examples in this document use @sanity/client and expect that you've installed and configured it for your project. If your client is named something other than client, update the code examples accordingly.

Here's an example of the client implementation:

// client.ts
import { createClient } from "@sanity/client";
export const client = createClient({
  projectId: '<project-id>',
  dataset: '<dataset-name>',
  useCdn: 'true',
  apiVersion: 'vX',
  token: '<read-write-token>'
})

Then, import client before using the examples below.

Translate allows you to specify certain words or phrases that are protected and will be ignored by the translation. Supply an array of strings to the protectedPhrases property.

await client.agent.action.translate({
  // Replace with your schema ID
  schemaId: "sanity.workspace.schema.default",

  // Tell the client the ID of the document to use as the source.
  documentId: "<document-id>",
  
  // Set the operation mode
  targetDocument: { operation: "create" },

  // Set the 'from' and 'to' language
  fromLanguage: {id: "en-US", title: "English"},
  toLanguage: {id: "el-GR", title: "Greek"},
  protectedPhrases: [
    "Sanity",
    "Media Library",
    "Agent Actions"
  ]
});

You may need to set a field in the new document so that it knows what language it is in. This is particularly important for routing and automation, where you may check against a field to determine its language. While we could hope the AI fills this in correctly, you can explicitly target the field with languageFieldPath. This will tell Translate to set the field to the same value as the toLanguage ID.

For example, if our document has a field, language, where editors select the document language, we would set the languageFieldPath to language.

await client.agent.action.translate({
  // Replace with your schema ID
  schemaId: "sanity.workspace.schema.default",

  // Tell the client the ID of the document to use as the source.
  documentId: "<document-id>",
  
  // Set the operation mode
  targetDocument: { operation: "create" },

  // Tell Translate to set this field to the target language,
  // in this case, 'el-GR'.
  languageFieldPath: "language",

  // Set the 'from' and 'to' language
  fromLanguage: {id: "en-US", title: "English"},
  toLanguage: {id: "el-GR", title: "Greek"},
  protectedPhrases: [
    "Sanity",
    "Media Library",
    "Agent Actions"
  ]
});

In addition to the patterns on this page, there are many common patterns that apply to all Agent Actions.