Because I’m so busy with my professional life at the moment, I’ve had to put my work on Retraceur on hold. I think I’ll have to face another 14 complicated days before being able to actively resume my contributions 😓.

I’m taking advantage of the recycling work I’ve done about the block I was using to share some of my posts in both French and English to tell you a little more about an enhancement I brought to the software source code from which Retraceur forked off. The Retraceur blocks administration will be differentiated from its extensions one.

To enjoy this block in your Retraceur powered Website, first download it using the doubleur.zip file from the block’s Assets section of its latest release page. Then go to your Retraceur Dashboard and find the Blocks Administration Screen to upload and activate it. Please, read this documentation page for more information about how to do so.

How to use this block?

Once installed, start writing a new post and use the Block Inserter or the slash command / to add a Dubber block.

You should immediately figure out that Dubber allows you to fully enjoy the Retraceur Block API to have a very granular control of the content parts you wish to make available in English.

For example, when including an image to your content, you don’t necessarily need to upload 2 versions of it if it means the same thing to english & french readers. Just make sure to upload it beneath a Dubber block so that it’ll always be rendered no matter what version of your post is displayed.

About the content you need to translate, please make sure to write it inside the Dubbing zones of each language as shown above. Then, when you visit your post into the front-end part of your Website, you’ll see a language switcher is added above your content.

By default, the french version of you post is displayed, the language switcher is informing the reader about it showing the Blue, White & Red flag is on. When you click on the Union Jack, the page reloads to a URL where the translate/en-us/ slug is added at the end of your post’s one. During this new loading process, the Retraceur Rewrite API understands the English version of the post is requested and this information is used to only render the English areas of the Dubber blocks you inserted inside your post.

If you need to move some pre-existing post content into the Dubbing zone of a Dubber block, I advise you to use the document overview interface of your Block Editor.

This way from this interface list view tab, it’ll be able easier for you to click, drag and drop your blocks inside the Dubbing zone of the language of your choice.

Happy dubbing!