English (US)
  1. Zendesk help
  2. Guide
  3. Using Guide for help center
  4. Supporting multiple languages in Help Center

Managing help center translations for articles

Jennifer Rowe
  • Edited
Zendesk Documentation Team

What's my plan?

Suite Growth, Professional, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plusprofessional enterprise plan

Note: Guide customers who are not on a Suite plan must have Support Professional or Enterprise with any Guide plan to support multiple languages.

If you have localized content for your help center, you can manage translations for articles by flagging them as outdated, setting the source language, or deleting translations as needed.

This article contains the following sections:

Flagging a translated article as out of date

You can flag an article translation as outdated, meaning it needs to be updated.

To flag a translated article as out of date
  1. Navigate to the translated article you want to set, then click Edit article in the top menu bar.
  2. Select the language of the translation from the drop-down, if you are not already viewing it.
  3. Click Options, then select Flag translation.

    You cannot set the source language as flagged.

  4. Click Update.

    The translation is marked as flagged so that you know it needs to be updated.

Setting an article translation as the source language

When you have article translations, you need to set one article as the source language. The article you set as the source cannot be removed.

To set a translated article as the source language
  1. Navigate to the translated article you want to set, then click Edit article in the top menu bar.
  2. Select the language of the translation from the drop-down.
  3. Click Translation options, then select Set as source language.

  4. Click Update.

Deleting a translated article

You can delete a translated version of an article if necessary. You cannot recover a deleted translation.

To delete a translated article
  1. Navigate to the translated article you want to delete, then click Edit article in the top menu bar.
  2. Select the language of the translation from the drop-down, if you are not already viewing it.
  3. Click Options, then select Delete translation.

If you are trying to delete an article that is currently the source language for the item, you must first set another article as the source language.

Return to top

9 Comments

  • Sandrine Tarea

    Hello,

    I have 5 languages and 300 articles. But all the articles are not translated in every language yet... When people are reading an article in English (default), they can display it in Japanese for example, thanks to the dropdown menu.

    But if the Japanese translation does not exist for this specific article, they are redirected to the Japanese home page of the knowledge base. I would like them to stay/be redirected to the English version with a message in a modal box explaining that this article is not translated yet.

    How can I do that? Thank you for your help.

    0
  • Monica

    Sandrine Tarea This info from Zendesk on how to redirect from untranslated to an existing language.

    0
  • Lilian Herman

    Is there any way to detect the language code of labels in an article?  When you click a label, the search results page opens, but the url to the search page is hardcoded to en-us:  

    <div class="article-labels-container">
                 {{#if article.labels}}
                    <ul class="article-labels">
                      {{#each article.labels}}
                    <li><a class="button" href="/hc/en-us/search?utf8=✓&query={{identifier}}">{{identifier}}</a></li>                  
                      {{/each}}
                    </ul>
                {{/if}}
              </div>

    I need a way to use the language code of the label in the url so the translated search page opens, and not the English page. 

    Any ideas?

    0
  • Erica Girges
    Zendesk Developer Advocacy
    Hi Lillian,
     
    Labels inherently live on the default article so they will always return the default language. This article might be a bit more help in breaking that down. If you wanted to provide me with your use case for needing labels to support multiple languages then I might be able to provide a different solution.
     
     
    Best,
     
    Erica 
    0
  • Lilian Herman

    Hi Erica,

    Thanks for the quick response! 

    The best outcome would actually be if articles only showed labels for the current browser language.  Showing all labels regardless of the language is going to be a huge issue once we add several more languages. 

    But if we can't accomplish that, then this is an issue:

    When you click a label in an article it opens search results based on that label.  Clicking a label always opens the results in the default language for the site, regardless of the language the browser is currently using. The preferred, and expected, behavior is that when using a browser in a language other than the default, and clicking a label in the translated language, the search results open in the translated language.  Perhaps the following image will help:

     

     

    0
  • Erica Girges
    Zendesk Developer Advocacy
    Hi Lillian, 
     
    Apologies for the delay and thank you for clarifying your needs. The primary use for labels is more to assist Answer Bot with article recommendations or to organize articles based on relevancy. They can also be used to improve SEO for your help center. As you can see, they're not really meant to be used as a form of filtering searches for users by clicking on them. If you're finding an influx in users relying on labels for this other purpose we would definitely love to hear more about it in our Help Center feedback page here. 
     
    Best,
     
    Erica
    0
  • Monika Kanomata

    Hello Zendesk team,

    This documentation seems outdated. The icon is "Flagged" instead of "Outdated". Could you please update so I can use this article for our teams to use?

    Thanks,

    Monika

    0
  • Elizabeth Williams
    Zendesk Documentation Team
    Thanks for the feedback. Brett Bowser the current UI has a "flagged" label which is different from the previous "outdated" label shown in the help article that Monika was asking us to revise. Looking at Monika's comment, I read it as the icon should be "flagged" instead of "outdated". I updated the image to reflect the current UI. If this is incorrect, please reopen and assign back to me. Thanks! Elizabeth
    1
  • Monika Kanomata
    • Edited

    Thank you for the quick update, Elizabeth! I will share this documents for the team :)

    If I can provide another feedback, the "outdated" can be replaced as "flagged" for the section title and body.

    Thanks!

    0

Please sign in to leave a comment.

Related articles

Powered by Zendesk