Multiple languages is available on Professional and Enterprise. These plans enable you to select multiple languages, which are used to determine the language used in system messages and email notifications that are generated by your business rules.
You first configure your account settings to support multiple languages, as described in this article. You then create and manage translations of all the content that is sent in email notifications and modify your business rules to automatically send that content based on the user's language using dynamic content.
If you have Guide Professional or Enterprise, you can enable languages in your Help Center and set up your knowledge base to deliver content in your supported languages.
This article describes the account language settings and how to create a workflow based on language:
Selecting the languages you want to support
To provide support for multiple languages, you must first select those languages from the list of languages that are available in Zendesk Support.
To change your language settings
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Settings > Account. - Select the Localization tab.
- In the Languages section, click Additional languages.
- Select the languages from the list that you want to support.
- Click Save tab.
Your language settings are used throughout Support to help you manage your workflow. For example, you can create automations or triggers that route tickets through your workflow based on the language setting of the requester. Creating a multiple language workflow is described in Using a requester's language in your business rules below.
If you have Guide Professional, you can also enable languages in your Help Center and set up your knowledge base to deliver content in your supported languages so that end users can choose the language they want in Help Center.
Setting and detecting a user's language
You can set a user's language preference in their user profile (this includes both your staff and your end-users).
If present, this setting can be used in your business rules to, for example, determine which dynamic content language variant is used or to route tickets to specific groups or agents.
The list of available languages is the same as the languages you selected in the Localization tab of the Account settings page. If the user's language is not supported, they cannot select it.
A user's language preference can be set in the following ways:
- Agents can set their own language preference by editing their profile.
- Agents with user management permission can set a user's language preference.
- You can set a user's language with the Set requester's language action, which is available in automations and triggers.
For unregistered end-users (those who do not yet have an account) or registered users who are not logged in, the language can be detected in several ways:
- Email: The language used in an end-user's email support request is automatically detected. See Detecting an end-user's language from an email message.
- Help Center (if you have Guide Professional and have enabled your languages in your Help Center): When an unregistered end-user has selected a language in the Help Center, the support request submit form, like the rest of the Help Center, is set to that language. Then, when the end-user submits a support request, the language is identified and their profile is flagged with the language.
- Web Widget: Zendesk can detect a user's preferred language from their Web browser preference setting. The accept-language header, which is passed via HTTP, contains information about the user's language preference. If that is present, the language can be detected.
Ticket attributes from system fields are automatically translated into the detected language, but if you want the attributes to be displayed in your default language, you can build dynamic content.
Using a requester's language in your business rules
Knowing your user's language means that you can use that information to determine how to respond to your users and how to move tickets through your workflow. As described above in Setting and detecting a user's language, there are a number of ways that a user's language can be set or detected.
Regardless of how the user's language is identified, it is accessible in automations, reports, triggers, and views via the Requester's language condition. Using this condition, you can, for example, assign incoming tickets to specific groups or agents based on language. You can also create views and reports to track tickets by language.
To use the Requester's language condition
- When building a business rule, click the Conditions drop-down selector, then scroll down to the Requester section and select Language.
The Requester's language condition allows you to test for a specific language and then act on that information. You also have the option of explicitly setting the user's language with the Set requester's language to action, which is available in automations and triggers.
Here are some examples that describe how to use the Requester's language condition and Set requester's language to action to build a workflow based on language.
Using dynamic content to communicate in multiple languages
Although it's possible to create a multiple language response within the email body of, for example, a trigger using Liquid markup (described in Using Liquid markup), you should instead use dynamic content. One of the advantages of doing so is that language detection is handled automatically, you don't need to write Liquid markup for each of the languages you support.
As described in Using your dynamic content, dynamic content and its language variants can be referenced in many places in your Zendesk Support using a placeholder. In the example in that article, a message describing how end-users can reset their passwords is added to a macro by simply adding the placeholder as the text in a macro action. Based on the user's language, the correct language variant of the dynamic content is used.
All of your content (from the welcome message to automated responses in your business rules) should be managed with dynamic content.
Assigning a ticket to a group or agent based on language
As you receive support tickets in the different languages you support, you can use automations and triggers to automatically route them through your workflow. As an example, imagine that your Zendesk Support includes three languages (English as the primary and default language and also French and German). You've structured your organization to support this by creating groups of agents that are fluent in French and German. When you receive support requests in either French or German you use a trigger to automatically assign those requests to the appropriate group.
This is easily done using the Requester's language condition, which is available in automations, reports, triggers, and views.
In this example, tickets from French language users are automatically assigned to the French support group.
Creating views and reports based on language
The Requester's language condition can also be used to create reports and views based on language.
You can also make the view visible to agents in a specific group.
In this example, the view is only visible to agents in the Italian Support group.
This works the same way in reports; use the Requester's language condition to select tickets in a particular language.
Setting a user's language preference with an automation or trigger
An end-user's language can be set using the Set requester's language to action, which is available in automations and triggers. You may want to use this action to set an end-user's language in those cases where the source of the support request is not otherwise identified as originating from a specific language. For example, if you use a separate support email address for each of the languages or locales that you support, you can use a trigger to then set the end-user's language based on that email address.
In this example, z3nbugulator uses the aide@bugulator.fr email address for its French language users. This email address is forwarded to french@z3nbugulator.zendesk.com, which is the email address used in this trigger.
When a user's language is set via the Set requester's language to action, that event is added to the ticket's events and notifications.
26 Comments
Hi,
I am in the process of adding multi-lingual forms to our Help Center, the forms are translated and all appears well in that regard.
However, I had assumed that the language indicator in the Help Center url, (e.g. the "en-us" in the url below) would also set the requester language when the form was submitted. Allowing me to automagically assign it to the proper language group.
zendesk-domainname.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=59971
Is there some way to submit the requester language value at ticket creation? I would rather not create new forms for each language, but that would be plan B.
Any help will be much appreciated! :-)
I stand corrected!
The language IS detected from the language identifier in the url!
My mistake, I think, was to re-use an existing end-user account (e-mail) when testing forms in different languages.
My test user already had a requester language set, so the form language did not overwrite it (which makes good sense) to the "forms language".
Hi Jacob!
I'm glad you were able to get it sorted out! Please let us know if you need anything else!
Hello,
We are using 3 different languages and pinned to home articles in Help Center. Our articles are written in English and only displayed in the English version.
We would like to display these articles for the other languages, without translation, just displaying the same articles as we are displaying in the English version.
Could you tell me a way to do that without recreating all the articles manually for each language?
Hi Jessie, Thank you for your answer. However I don't want the articles to be translated. I just want to display the English articles in the other languages automatically, without translation. Is there an option to do that?
Hi there! We are using your Multi Language feature, and realized that the language switcher is only available on the web interface, and not on mobile. Is there a way to make the language switcher available for our mobile visitors?
Hi Lappy!
The mobile version of your Help Center unfortunately won't detect your users' language preference, and there's no link to change languages. One way of working around this would be for them to enter the foreign language version of the URL.
The other thing you could consider doing is disabling the mobile friendly version of the site so they just view the full site on their mobile device. It's not a perfect option, but it will solve the language issue.
You also have the option to customize your Help Center with a responsive theme, which would make your desktop site automatically optimize when viewed on a mobile device. One of our Community Moderator's has written a couple excellent tips about this.
Hope that helps!
Hi I'm having a similar issue to Sami.
We added quite a few articles in the default english (us).
But recently changed the language to english (south african)
However it seems that we now have to re-write all the articles again, even thought there is very little difference between these two languages (we are a south african business and therefore prefer to have it noted that we are using south african english though).
Is there no way to change the language and still keep all originally created articles? Bar the obvious (yet immensely time consuming) copy and paste all english (us) articles to english (South African)...
Hey George -
I see that this is your first post, so let me welcome you to the Zendesk Community!
It sounds like you are dealing with a bit of a conundrum there. Unfortunately, even though the languages are very similar, as far as the computers are concerned, they're different languages. In order to change the language, you do have to manually re-create each article.
With localization enabled, once you have the content created, Zendesk will automatically serve up the content in the language in which someone is searching (assuming it's one of the languages you have enabled), but there is no built-in automatic translation functionality.
Sorry to hear that you've got a big task ahead of you to make this change, but do let us know if you have any additional questions!
Hi,
I was wondering why the (required) text isn't updated to the dynamic language even though the field name seems to be...I don't see how I can update that. Can you help?
Thanks,
Karen
Hi Karen,
I think it is, but if you are viewing the form while being logged in the required text warnings are shown in the language your user is set to.
Try viewing your web form in incognito / private browsing mode (Ctrl + shift + n in Chrome) that should let you see the form as an anonymous user.
Hi, is there a way to create an Insights report or a view capturing tickets created in a language other than English?
Reporting on Requester Language parameter does not work for us as some users' tend to submit tickets in English even though their language listed in the user profile is not English.
Hi Teena!
The only thing I can think of would be to create some macros that agents can use to add a tag to the tickets that indicate which language it's in. You can then report on those tags in Insights.
Can you tell me more about what you're trying to do?
Hi Team,
Is this article up to date? When I search for "requester: language" as a condition of a trigger then option does not exist. There is however a language option:
HI Heather -
Thanks for pointing it out. I've asked the documentation team to take a look and update if it's inaccurate.
Hey Heather! Just wanted to follow up with you to let you know that our Documentation team has confirmed that this article is up-to-date. Please let us know if we can help you with anything!
Hi,
I have problems adding multiple languages. I have set up English as the default language and Spanish as an additional language:
An end-user who has English in his preferences, as shown in the following image:
When he registers in Zendesk, everything is in Spanish:
Could you help me with that?
Thanks
Hi,
I'm trying to create a report showing the number of tickets we get by language, but I can't figure out how to look at language on reports. In the how section I see an option for User Locale, but that doesn't seem to be the same as language as it's under counting the number of tickets we get in non-English languages (as compared to when I set up a view by language). Can you point me to how I should be setting up the report.
Thanks
Hello Catalina,
So this should be possible via setting up tags for user languages and then running the subsequent report to discern the number of tickets you are receiving in said language. I've gone ahead and linked an article that breaks down how to set up these tags and if there is anything else we can assist with please don't hesitate to ask.
How to tag tickers based on language
Hi, I've managed to set up 2 languages for our site - French & German in addition to English - but I am struggling to see how we can enter translations for our home page for the FR & DE site. Please could you suggest how to do this - is it all to be entered in the code?
Many thanks.
Hi Jayne,
You'll need to create translated versions of content in the article editor, the HTML source code for the site is available but doesn't need to be edited if you don't want to. We have a walkthrough for creating translated versions of articles and adding translations to the categories and sections in our article Localizing Help Center content.
Can anyone point me to a "recipe" for adding a Translate button to a Guide theme that would leverage Google Translate to translate the page? Similar to right-clicking in Chrome and selecting Translate, but in this case a button in the UI that was always available to the Guide user.
Hey Eric,
I did some digging on my end and was able to find the following guide submitted by another user that may help: Insert Google Translate widget to your Helpcenter
Not sure if that's exactly what you're looking for but hopefully it points you in the right direction!
Let me know if there's anything else I can assist with.
Cheers!
Hi there! I was wondering if there is a way to save a user's language permanently? We offer support in different languages and different markets. Each market has their own contact details, so any communication from a user in that market will always be linked to the brand of that country.
Unfortunately each time that we manually try to save the user's language (for example an English person based in the Netherlands) it gets overwritten due to the brand not matching the language. It would be great for us if we can save the user's language regardless of what market they are based in. Is that possible?
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