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The translations package

The translations package is an alternative to the translator package (part of the beamer bundle) that was needed since it turned out that the \translate macro wasn't expandable. However, there are more differences to translator and there may also be reasons why one might want to use translations instead of babel's \addto\captions<lang> mechanism or KOMA-Script's \providecaptionname.

The babel way

If there are language aliases you have to provide a translation for every variant:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\def\colorname{color}
\addto\captionsgerman{\def\colorname{Farbe}}
\addto\captionsngerman{\def\colorname{Farbe}}
\addto\captionsgermanb{\def\colorname{Farbe}}
\addto\captionsaustrian{\def\colorname{Farbe}}
\addto\captionsnaustrian{\def\colorname{Farbe}}
\begin{document}
\colorname\ = Farbe
\end{document}

The KOMA-Script way

This has the same “drawback” as the babel way: you need to provide a translation for every variant:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage{scrbase}
\def\colorname{color}
\providecaptionname{german}\colorname{Farbe}
\providecaptionname{germanb}\colorname{Farbe}
\providecaptionname{ngerman}\colorname{Farbe}
\providecaptionname{austrian}\colorname{Farbe}
\providecaptionname{naustrian}\colorname{Farbe}
\begin{document}
\colorname\ = Farbe
\end{document}

The translator way

This is easier with translator:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage[ngerman]{translator}
\newtranslation[to=German]{color}{Farbe}
\def\colorname{\translate{color}}
\begin{document}
\colorname\ = Farbe
\end{document}

However, the package needs to be told the document language explicitly and \translate is not expandable.

The translations way

Quite similar to translator but \GetTranslations is expandable and the package recognizes the document language automatically:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage{translations}
\DeclareTranslation{German}{color}{Farbe}
\def\colorname{\GetTranslation{color}}
\begin{document}
\colorname\ = Farbe
\end{document}

translations also knows the concept of dialects which means it is easy to provide different translations for different dialects.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[british]{babel}
\usepackage{translations}
\DeclareTranslation{English}{color}{color}
\DeclareTranslation{British}{color}{colour}
\def\colorname{\GetTranslation{color}}
\begin{document}
\colorname\ = colour
\end{document}

If there wasn't a translation for the dialect but only for it's base language translations would use that instead. The same does not work with translator:

\documentclass[british]{article}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{translator}
\newtranslation[to=English]{color}{color}
\newtranslation[to=British]{color}{colour}
\def\colorname{\translate{color}}
\begin{document}
\colorname\ = color
\end{document}