The default configuration of Zendesk Support is in the English language. However, the agent and administrator user interface can be viewed in a number of supported languages. For example, you can change the language of the system messages that appear in email notifications to your end-users.
You can switch Zendesk Support to a different default language by modifying your account settings and updating the default business rules that contain text in English.
If you want to support more than one language, see Adding multiple languages to Zendesk Support. Zendesk fully supports UTF-8 (Unicode) and all languages can be added to forms, comments, tags, and so on.
This article covers the following tasks:
Setting the default language for your account
The default language is the language that agents see in the agent interface by default and that end-users see in the Help Center by default.
To set the default language for your account
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Settings > Account.
- Select the Localization tab.
- Beside Languages, select a default language from the drop-down.
- Click Save tab.
Setting time zone and format for Zendesk Support
You can change your time zone and format so that timestamps, such as those on tickets and articles, correspond to your locale.
To set your time and format
- Click the Admin icon (
) from the sidebar, then select Account.
- Select the Localization tab.
Select the appropriate GMT time zone.
You can also select whether time appears in the 12-hour or 24-hour format.
On Professional and Enterprise your staff and end-users to set their own time zone in the user profile.
Translating system-generated new user email notifications
When end-users sign up, they receive a number of email notifications. By default, these are in English but you can easily translate them into another language by selecting Settings > Customers and editing the messages.
Please follow the link below to choose a password, and we will log you in right away.
We need to verify that you are the owner of this email address. Please follow the link below to verify.
If you don't require your end-users to register and log in, they will not receive any of these messages. See Setting up to provide email-only support.
If you're using dynamic content (see Providing multiple language support with dynamic content, you'd replace this text with placeholders that automatically insert the appropriate language when the email notifications are sent.
Adding translated text to the agent signature
In the Agents settings page (Admin icon () > Settings > Agents), you can configure an agent signature that appears in outgoing email notifications. You can use placeholders to dynamically insert the signature and phone number that agents add to their own user profiles, like in the example below:
You can also add additional text in the appropriate language to the account signature. For example:
{{agent.signature}} - {{agent.phone}}
Toute l'équipe du Support MondoCam
If you use dynamic content, you'd add a dynamic content placeholder here instead. See Providing multiple language support with dynamic content.
Translating the text in default automations, macros, and triggers
When you create a Zendesk account, a number of automations, macros, and triggers are included to help you get started managing your support workflow. Each of these contains text in English that is sent to end-users in email notifications. For more information, see the following topics:
If you support more than one language, you can also use Liquid markup to generate messages in more than one language from a single business rule. For example, you can edit the Notify requester of received request trigger to generate messages based on the user's language setting. For more information, see Using Liquid markup to support multiple languages in automations, macros, and triggers.
On Professional and Enterprise, you can use dynamic content to manage content for multiple languages. Using dynamic content, you replace the text with a dynamic content placeholders that automatically insert the appropriate language version of the text based on the user's language. See Providing multiple language support with dynamic content.
19 Comments
Does anyone have advice on how to translate help docs at scale? Any services you recommend? Thanks!
Is there a way to have the Not Satisfied Reasons dropdown to be translated as well.
We have enabled locale and the rest of the content on the page is translated (in this case, to Spanish). Refer screenshot below, the drop down options for "Not Satisfied", is a mix of English and Spanish
Hi djmiths! When you create your bad rating follow-up questions (in the Admin section > Settings > Customers > Satisfaction), you can use a dynamic content placeholder to provide translation for custom satisfaction reasons. I hope that helps!
Springboard America give me my points not give can I redeem it in check, Help me!
I wait!
Hi Yuriy - we aren't Springboard America, we're the company that powers their customer support services. It looks like you should head here to get assistance from them. Hope you find what you're looking for!
If I change the time zone does it change it across the board for all of our agents or is it just for my instance?
Hi Shali,
Time zone on the instance level will change many things for everyone, however, the base UI can be configured on an agent profile so they see time in their own timezone. However, the area to be aware of with the instance level time zone is that it will also change Insights reporting. If you have teams in other timezones that are dependent or expect reporting to not change, you may impact them. Unfortunately Insights doesn't allow you to shift time zones on the data so you'd have to manually adjust for reports.
Hi! How do I remove a language from my Zendesk account?
Hi Suhas!
Do you want to change it in the agent interface, or in your Help Center?
When I set a time zone, does it automatically take adjust for DST based on the city selected?
Hey Laurent,
Thanks for reaching out to us. That's a good question and one I can understand you wanting to make sure works as you expect.
Zendesk hardcodes its time as UTC for consistency so there's no misinterpretations in our API or core numbers, but it will appear to you as the Time Zone you select. Tickets made near DST though can appear to be slightly off by an hour depending on what time of year you choose to take a look at the Ticket.
For reference, here's our documentation on your question:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000457747-Why-don-t-timestamps-in-the-agent-interface-always-match-the-UTC-timestamp-
I hope that helps!
Keith Hayward | Customer Advocate | support@zendesk.com
Hi, Keith! I was actually referring to the schedules timezones. Do they take DST automatically into account? It's important to make sure our SLA calculations are correct. Thanks!
Hi,
This article says that "the agent and administrator user interface, as well as the end-user experience, can be viewed in a number of supported languages."
When I changed my default language in Settings>Account>Localization, everything stayed in English.
I want to know if the entire interface is available in these languages, so that an agent who doesn't understand English can work in his language.
Thank you
Hi David,
Yes, your agents should see everything in the interface in whichever default language you set. It could be a cacheing issue; have you logged out, cleared your cache and logged back in? Let us know if you're still having trouble and we'll dig into the problem further.
Hi Nicole,
Thank you, but indeed - i tried what you suggested, and I still see everything in English.
Just to make sure we're on the same page - what parts of the interface are supposed to be in my selected language?
UPDATE: Found the solution here - turns out its also an agent based setting
Hi,
I can't set an agents' language to 'Nederlands (België)', even though this language is enabled. I can select it for end-users, but it's not in the list for agents.
This is the selection for end-users:
This is the selection for agents:
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