If you have configured your help center to support multiple languages, you can add translated versions of each article in your help center, or add articles only in specific languages. The help center displays pages in different languages based on locale code in the page URL. Example, ".../hc/en-us". Any translated article must also have parent pages (section and category), translated in the same language.
You can also display snippets of translated text on help center pages. For example, a welcome message on the home page or a company tag line in the header.
You must be a Guide Manager to add localized content to Help Center.
Basic workflow for localizing your Help Center in multiple languages
Here's the workflow for localizing your help center in multiple languages:
- Configure your help center to support your other languages, if you have not already done so (see Configuring your help center to support multiple languages).
- Get
your
articles translated in your
supported
languages. This is
done outside
of the
help
center,
but there are many options.Note: Check out Unbabel in Zendesk Marketplace. Unbabel offers multilingual customer support with seamless ticket translation, including automated help center translations that enable you to localize FAQ content in 28 languages.
- Prepare your sections and categories by adding translated titles (see Adding translations to sections and categories to ensure translated articles display below).
- Add the translated content to your help center (see Adding translated articles below).
- If needed, add translated text snippets
(see
Adding translated text
below).
Many of the pre-built page elements used in your help center are already localized. For example, the element that lets users vote on an article displays "Was this article helpful?" in English and "Cet article vous a-t-il été utile?" in French. You don't need to localize the strings. For a list of available translated strings, see the translation helper in the help center Templates docs.
It's a good idea to establish a localization process for ongoing additions and updates to your help center.
Adding translations to sections and categories to ensure translated articles display
Any translated article must have a parent page translated in the same language. If you add a translation for an article that does not have a corresponding translation for the section or category, users will not be able to view the article in the help center, (even though the article is published).
The page hierarchy is as follows: Category landing page > Section landing page > Article. For example, if you add an article translated in German, the article must have a German section page. In turn, the German section page must have a German category page. The help center cannot display orphan articles.
When localizing your help center, it makes sense to start by adding localized versions of category pages, followed by section pages, followed by articles. This workflow guarantees that any new translated article has a parent page -- a section or category page -- that's translated in the same language so that users can view it.
You must be a Guide Manager to add section and category translations.
To add a translated title for a section or category
- In your help center, navigate to an existing section or category.
- Click Edit section or Edit category in the top menu bar.
- Select a language for the translation you want to add from the list at the top of the
page.
If you do not see a drop-down menu of languages, then you first need to enable languages for your help center (see Enabling languages for your help center).
- Enter or paste the translated content for the name and
(optionally),
description.
Keep in mind that any translated page must have a parent page translated in the same language. After you add the translation for the parent page, you can click Refresh and it will take up to three minutes before the change is registered.
Note: You'll see a warning if you add a translation for a section that does not have a corresponding translation for the category. As a best practice to prevent these warnings, create the translated categories first, then go through and translate the sections. - Click Update translation to create the translated version of the page.
- Repeat the steps to add more translated pages.
Adding translated articles
You can add translated versions of existing articles. You can also add translated articles that don't have versions in other languages.
When you add translated versions of existing pages, the original article and its translated versions share the same URL except for the locale. This feature can simplify managing your content. For example, the following URLs point to the U.S. English and French versions of the same article:
https://mondocam.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202529393
https://mondocam.zendesk.com/hc/fr/articles/202529393
Users can also manually switch to a different language by selecting it from the language menu in your help center.
To add a translated version of an existing page
- In your help center, navigate to the existing page.
- Click
Edit
article in the
top
menu
bar.
- Select
a language for the translation you want to add from the list at the top
of the page.
If you do not see a drop-down menu of languages, then you first need to enable languages for your help center (see Enabling languages for your help center).
- Enter or paste the translated content into the
draft
article.
Keep in mind that any translated page must have a parent page translated in the same language. You'll see a warning if you add a translation for an article that does not have a corresponding translation for the section or category. For example:
After you add the translation for the parent page, you can click Refresh and it will take up to three minutes before the change is registered.
- When you are finished, do one of the following:
- To save your article translation as a draft and publish it later, click
Save.
- To publish your article translation, click the drop-down arrow on the Save button, then select Publish now.
- To save your article translation as a draft and publish it later, click
Save.
- Repeat the steps to add more translated pages.
To add a translated page with no version in another language
-
Click
Add
in the
top
menu bar,
then select
the kind of page you want to add.
- Select the language of the content from the list at the top of the page.
- Enter or paste the content into the page.
- When you are finished, do one of the following:
- To save your article translation as a draft and publish it later, click
Save.
- To publish your article translation, click the drop-down arrow on the Save button,
then select
Publish
now.
- To save your article translation as a draft and publish it later, click
Save.
Adding translated text
- A welcome message on the home page
- A company tag line in the header
- A legal notice in the footer
- Service alerts
Many of the pre-built page elements used in your help center are already localized. For example, the element that lets users vote on an article displays "Was this article helpful?" in English and "Cet article vous a-t-il été utile?" in French. You don't need to localize the strings. For a list of available translated strings, see the translation helper in the help center Templates docs.
This functionality uses the dynamic content feature in Support. This feature is not meant to be used to localize articles, titles, and other help center template elements that support multiple languages. See Adding translated pages above and the translation helper docs in help center Templates for more information.
Specifying the language variants of the text in Support
You specify the language variants of a snippet of text on the Manage > Dynamic Content page in Zendesk Support. For instructions, see Providing multiple language support with dynamic content. Example:
Add the content in the same language variants as the languages you support on your help center. If you don't specify a variant for a language, nothing will be displayed in that language in the help center. For example, suppose your help center supports English and French for a Canadian website. Add English and French variants of each snippet of text.
Make a note of the item name. You'll need it for the following step. In the previous
example, the placeholder is {{dc 'welcome_message'}}
, so the item name is
"welcome_message".
Inserting the dynamic content in a template in Guide
Insert your text variants in help center templates with the dynamic content helper. When the page is requested by a web browser, the template helper inserts the appropriate text variant.
- In Guide, click the Customize design icon (
) in the sidebar.
- Click the theme you want to edit to open it.
- Click Edit Code.
- In the Templates section, click the template you want to modify.
The page opens in the code editor.
- Add the dynamic content in your template using the dynamic content helper. Example:
{{dc 'welcome_message'}}
- To save your changes, click Save at the top of the sidebar.
For more information on working with templates, see Working with the page code.
89 Comments
Hi,
We support 5 languages in our Help Center and would like to have the Web Widget form locale behavior to match HC behavior - so when Danish is selected in HC the web widget is also Danish.
Default behavior for the web widget is to match the users browser language, but this is often enforced by company policy and will not allow users to view the form in their own language.
I know I can enforce a single language using:
But how can I map the language selection in the HC with the locale settings of the Web widget? Can I?
Any help is appreciated, thanks!
I got some awesome help for this issue - matching Zendesk Web Widget language to the selected language in the Help Center - from the Zendesk support team.
It is not officially supported, but I found it very valuable and you might too.
Following your Zendesk Web Widget embed code should be the following code snippet:
The example is for a Spanish (es) and French (fr) language Help Center, so you will need to make adjustments if you have other or more languages.
Thanks for coming back to share your solution, Jacob!
Hello!
We've built a Helpcenter with articles in swedish and english. Now our Finnish office is working on translating our articles in Finnish.
We wonder if there is a possibility to change the author of the article, depending on language? We want the Finnish agent to be the author of the Finnish version - so that customers that have questions will turn to her and not the Swedish agent.
Right now the Swedish agent is author of all the articles, although he only wrote the swedish texts, and another wrote the english ones and a third one wrote the finnish etc.
We will expand and add multiple languages, and need this function going forward as well.
We want the articles to stil be translations of each other so that the customer can switch languages and still be in the same article. I'm thinking that a workaround for this problem is that the Finnish agent publishes "new" articles with the translated material, but then the different versions won't point to each other, right?
Hi Saga,
I wish I had better news, however I did a bunch of testing on this possibility and found that when using sideloading for creating translated and localized content in Help Center articles, it is only possible to set one author per article for all translations.
However, you should be able to accomplish this with custom code and conditional statements to change the author based on the local being viewed. One of our awesome Support Advocates made the following resource on how to do getting started setting this up: Displaying an alternative author on your articles
Hi,
Is there a way to export all HC content and later import for a specific language (like you do for dynamic content)?
If not, is it possible to at least export all of it at once/per section/per category?
Thanks
Hi Gal,
You can use the API to export articles to files that you can then send to localization vendors. The following article describes the basics:
https://help.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/229136947-Zendesk-REST-API-tutorial-Backing-up-your-knowledge-base-with-Python
Another article gives more details on using the API and setting up a workflow for loc handoffs:
https://help.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/229489108-Automating-your-first-localization-handoff-Help-Center-
Charles
Is it possible via Help Center to direct a user in the Netherlands to, say the UK version of our Help Center?
I know if we didn't translate articles into Dutch, that Dutch users would be directed to our default HC (en-us), but that wouldn't work for us given the necessary difference in content based on our products and business rules.
Is it possible to localize the Help Center regionally rather than by language? i.e. an English language HC for customers in India?
Hey Seth! Welcome to the Community!
The localization functions only apply to languages, I'm afraid. Can you give me more details on your use case? I'm interested to know what you'd like to accomplish!
Thanks Jessie!
We have a separate support team in India, as well as slightly different offerings, policies, pricing, and workflows. We only have 1 HC though, so all tickets come into my team's inboxes. We spend a lot of time triaging those boxes simply assigning tickets to the India group for them to handle. It would be great if India could have their own FAQs and tickets from Indian students went directly to the India team.
Hi Seth!
As far as routing tickets, you should be able to accomplish this with a Trigger.
For the India-specific resources, have you considered our Multibrand feature? It's included on the Enterprise plan (which I believe you're on), or available as an add-on for the Professional plan. That would allow you to create a completely separate HC for those users.
Is it possible to use localization to translate a specific Zendesk form? I'm thinking field names and descriptions.
Hi Justin,
Absolutely, here's a guide to use Dynamic Content to translate custom field, values, labels etc. You need to be on the Professional or higher plan though.
We have a predominantly English-speaking user base but some terms vary by region and of course the US and CA markets have spelling variations. Rather than just copy/paste all article content which doubles the maintenance workload, it would be much better to have a language "en" as default and individual pages translated to "en-us", "en-au", etc. as required.
If others have the same requirement there is a Fallback to default language if articles aren't translated to end-user language feature request that you can vote for.
Hi,
I was wondering why the category list on the left is not automatically displayed in the translated language. It seems I am missing something. Should I translate them separately? If so, where can I do that?
Hi Bob,
I see when hovering over your category elements that the url is missing the locale element (the part that comes after /hc/, ja for Japanese or en-us for English), I suspect this means that it simply displays the default language version. In your case English instead of the one for the selected language.
I hope this helps you identify where in the code something needs correcting. If you need more specific help, maybe someone else here can better narrow it down for you.
Hi Jacob,
It seems I need someone who knows exactly what I need to do to fix it. Thank you anyway for your kind reply.
Hi,
Not sure if this is the perfect thread to post this or if I have missed some other posts/threads related to translations.
But wondering if there's any add-on available for easier translation of knowledge base. Or integration to Google-Translate...
Like say my default language is EN, then we have German and Polish enabled as well. So if I edit my EN article and switch the language to DE (German), my English texts will be copied from the EN article, and then automatically translated (except for screenshots ofcourse) to German. Then the only work to be done next is to proofread and polish the translation.
Hi @Lou,
Here are some links that you might find helpful -
Let me know if this is what you are looking for.
Thanks
Team Diziana
@Lou
We have a client we helped do localization using a service/ZD App called Transifex.
It has an interface where you select the items you need to send for translation, then ca see the status of each. They handle the translation for you for what was a very reasonable price.
Hi Team,
Why is it when a user chooses a language they only see categories/sections/articles in that language?
Why are they not shown the non translated in the default language?
Thank you
Hi @Heather
I have explored this issue a bit so I thought I would step in and help.
As you can see here, what you are asking is unfortunately definitely not supported: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115007227107-Can-I-display-the-default-language-version-of-an-article-in-a-translated-section- ,
What definitely is supported is if for example the user is already in the help center in French and an article that isn't translated to French is linked to from another French article, then it will show it in the default language instead of saying its not available. (it automatically somehow changes the language code in the URL to the default language).
I did it for our help center last year, and it is working, and now I forgot exactly how I enabled that. I'm sure if you opened a support ticket they could help you. I think it was some code I put into our theme.
Another tip I was once given by support is that a translation can be created using the API. Here's the resource they sent me: https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/help_center/translations#create-translation
I haven't tried this yet. I also don't plan to because we are currently giving the Zendesk Google translate widget button a try, so I actually am not going to have the articles translated, and people can just choose their language from the google translate widget embedded right in the article. I do realize this has some context issues etc. but we are giving it a shot. Maintaining a large help center article base in 4 languages with constant product updates is not currently worth the investment.
Good luck,
Merav
@Heather
As to the why, the idea is to have a clean uniformly localized experience of your content.
As an end user, I would think it very disorderly and confusing, if I was viewing an English site and some articles and categories were in Chinese, French or other.
As a Help Center publisher it would add an unnecessary layer of complexity to the organizing of localized content, if you had to decide on each piece of default content if it should be published as a fall back if there is no translated version available. Especially for high volume Help Centers.
I hope I understood you correctly.
Hi Jacob,
I would like the ability to do this but to fallback from a dialect of a language rather than to a different language. For an en-US user if there is no content in en-US I want to fall back en-GB or just en but not to zh-CN or fr-FR.
Most of our English-speaking users are outside North America. It makes sense to have articles that are written in international English for them. However content that refers to units of measure, paper sizes or American spellings (e.g. license instead of licence) should be shown to US users without having to duplicate all of the other content that is common. That content is not confusing to US users because it is identical in both languages.
Even better would be the ability to localise text within content! Imagine some thing like:
If your [[en-US]tires[en-GB]tyres] are bald you can lose your driver's [[en-us]license[en-GB]licence].
Has anyone used dynamic content for links in a theme? We have a customized header link in our theme like this (generic example):
`<a href="https://ourhomepage.com/" target="_blank">Return to Home</a>`
I want to be able to localize the "Return to Home" copy and have tried using dynamic content, but I keep getting this error: `not possible to access `dc` in `dc.return_to_home_link`.
I have tried doing it by just using `dc` for the link copy and using it for the entire href string. I get the same error both times.
If it helps, I am trying this inside this div in the standard theme's header:
```<div class="nav-wrapper">
<span class="icon-menu"></span>
<nav class="user-nav" id="user-nav">```
Is there an easy solution here, or is dynamic content not possible to use for this case?
@Derek
That's an interesting use case, but probably of limited value to most users. If you are worried that content won't be discoverable because of the spelling differences, you can add labels to the relevant articles with the dialect alternate spellings.
@Colin
Have you seen this article about using DC to customize Help Center design?
There's a notation difference in how the placeholder is used, maybe that's what is causing you error?
Your placeholder in Zendesk support:
Your placeholder should look like this in the html templates:
Hope that helps you out!
@Jacob I had not seen that article. That did the trick - thanks!
Good to hear Colin, welcome to the community!
I don't know if anyone has asked this before, but I was wondering if there is a way to translate text that existed in a help center template helper.
For example the {{request_form}} helper outputs a label with the text "Let us know what we can help you with!" Is there a way to display a different text and provide translation for that?
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