Understanding how syncing works in Parents and Variations

A Parent and its Variations have a parent-child relationship. In other words, you change Variations by editing their Parent. 

Parent changes don't automatically appear in the Variations when they are made. Instead, they need to be manually synced. Syncing allows the changes you've made in the Parent to be inherited by its Variations—this ensures that the Parent and Variations stay consistent with each other. Syncing can also translate any new text that you've added to the Parent, allowing you to update or add new information when needed.

For example:

You have an English Parent Project with three translated Variations (French, Portuguese, and Greek).

1. You add a Drag and Drop component with some English text to page 1 of your Parent—this makes the Variations out of sync as they don't currently have this component or the new text.
2. You sync the changes with your Variations, choosing also to Auto-Translate the new text in the Drag and Drop as part of the sync.
3. When the sync is complete, the Drag and Drop component is automatically added to each Variation and the text within is translated into their respective languages. The Variations are now in sync with the Parent.

The GIF below demonstrates this sequence.

Syncing scopes

There are three different scopes that allow you to choose which text is translated as part of a sync. Structural changes to the Parent like new pages or deleted components will always be synced but you have three options to choose from that determine how much text is translated as part of the sync.

• Auto-Translate changes since last sync—translates any text that has been added or changed since the last time your Parent and Variations were synced. This is useful if you want to update specific text in your Variations without overwriting other text edits you've made directly to them as part of a review. This is also preserves any direct changes you've made to a Variation's media.
• Auto-Translate entire Project—translates and syncs everything from the Parent to all Variations. This will overwrite direct text and media changes you've made to your Variations with auto-translated text. This is useful if you want to bring your Variations back into full sync with your Parent.
• Don't translate changes now—syncs all changes from the Parent to the Variations except for text which is ignored. Examples of when to use this include when you've made a structural change to the Parent that doesn't require a text update like deleting a page or when you've changed the Parent's configuration settings.

Directly editing Variations

Your editing abilities are more restricted in Variations to ensure that they remain consistent with their Parent and avoid differences in functionality and learner experience. However, there are still ways that you can edit the Variation directly if needed.

Making direct changes to a Variation will not require you to re-sync with the Parent, meaning that you can refine translated text or make changes to help with localization. Examples of this include amending the tone of a translation, such as replacing tu with vous in a French Variation or changing an image in a Spanish Variation to better cater to local audiences. 

You can make non-structural changes like text, media, and style edits directly to a Variation without affecting the Parent or the other Variations.

It isn't possible in a Variation to make structural and configuration changes. These are controlled by the Parent instead. See Permitted editing actions in Variations for more information about the kinds of edits you can make in a Variation.