Translated Text

The “Translated Text” attribute is the multilingual variant of the Text attribute. It stores a separate short text value per language (up to 255 characters). The values are not stored in the MetaModel table, but in the translation table tl_metamodel_translatedtext.

Typical use cases:

Multilingual product names, titles, or headings
Language-dependent short descriptions or subtitles
Translated article numbers or references (when language-dependent)

Note

For longer texts (over 255 characters), the attribute Translated Long Text should be used.

Installation

The attribute is installed via the Contao Manager or Composer:

composer require metamodels/attribute_translatedtext

Settings when Creating the Attribute

The attribute has no specific settings when creating it. Only the general attribute settings are used:

Name, column name, description
Unique values
Override variants

Settings in Render Settings

The attribute has no specific render settings. In the attribute list of a render setting, the usual options are available:

Option	Description
Template	Selection of a custom template for the output of the text value.
CSS class	Optional CSS class added to the output element.

Settings in the Input Form

When the attribute is added to an input form, the following options are available:

Display

Option	Description
Backend class	CSS classes for the display of the field in the backend form (e.g. `w50` for half width, `long` for full width).
Template for backend	Selection of a custom widget template for the backend form.
Template for frontend	Selection of a custom widget template for frontend editing (only available if the “Frontend Editing” extension is installed).

Functions

Option

Description

Required field

Makes the field a required field.

Regular expression

Validation of the input with a predefined regular expression. Available patterns:

digit — Digits only
natural — Positive integers
alpha — Letters only
alnum — Letters and digits
extnd — Everything except # and <>
date — Date in the configured format
time — Time in the configured format
datim — Date and time
friendly — Friendly name (for email)
email — Email address
emails — Comma-separated email addresses
url — URL address
alias — Alias-compatible characters
phone — Phone number
prcnt — Percentage (0–100)
locale — Language code (e.g. de, de_DE)
language — Language code
fieldname — Valid field name

Overview (backend filter and search)

Option	Description
Filterable	The attribute is available in the backend as a filter criterion.
Searchable	The attribute is available in the backend as a search field.

Filter Rules

Filter rule	Note
Text search	Free text input for searching within the text field of the active language.
Simple lookup	Filters by an exact or partial value via a URL parameter.
Single select	Selection of a value from a list of existing text values.
Multi-select	Multiple selection from existing text values.
Register	Filters by the initial letter of the text value.
Levenshtein-based search	Similarity search with typo tolerance; requires the package `attribute_levenshtein`.
Loupe	Full-text index search; requires the package `filter_loupe` (from MM 2.4).

Special Functions

Database storage

The text values are stored per language in tl_metamodel_translatedtext (fields: att_id, item_id, langcode, value as varchar(255)). No column is created in the MetaModel table.

Fallback language

If a value is missing for a language, MetaModels falls back to the fallback language. IDs without a value in the fallback language are treated as empty strings.

HTML entities

The attribute handles Contao HTML entities automatically (basicEntities). Special characters are correctly encoded and decoded when saving and outputting.

Uniqueness per language

If “Unique values” is active, MetaModels checks uniqueness separately per language.