You must enable all of the languages that you want to support in your help center. For each language you enable, you can add a translated help center name as well as translated snippets of text. Your help center languages are independent of any languages you have enabled in Zendesk Support.
After you enable languages for your help center, you can add localized content, see Localizing help center content), so that end users can choose the language they want in your help center.
You must be a Guide Admin to configure help center languages.
Enabling languages for your help center
You can enable any help center languages you plan to support.
You need to set up your knowledge base to deliver content in your supported languages for your enabled languages.
Your help center languages are enabled independently of any languages you have enabled in Zendesk Support. If you enable a language in Guide that is not enabled in Support, when that language is selected in your help center, the "Submit a request" form will appear in the Support account default language.
To enable a language in your help center
- In Guide, click the Settings icon (
) icon in the sidebar, then select
Language settings. - Click Add new language.
You can scroll or search the list. You can choose from any of the Guide supported languages and most of the languages that are available by request, some of which have crowd-sourced translations.
- Click the Language drop-down to select a language, then enter a
Help Center name for the language.
The help center name might be the translated name of your default help center name.
- Click Add language.
- Click Add new language again if you want to add more
languages.
A list of all your enabled languages appears on the help center Language page.
- Click Save on the help center Language page when you are
finished.
Next, you need to set up your knowledge base to deliver content in your supported languages, if you haven't already done so.
Understanding how translated content is displayed in your help center
The difference between having a language enabled and having translated content available for that language has implications on what a user sees in a help center. For example, the default language for a help center might be set to US English (en-us). The help center might also provide translated content in French (fr).
The language that a user sees in your help center is based on defaulting to the following, in order of preference:
- The language specified in the URL of the page the user is currently on (if present)
- The language set for the user's current active session
- The language preference set in the user's user profile
- The preferred language of the user's browser
- Other compatible languages specified by the user's browser
If the help center is unable to match any of these languages, then the user is directed to the default language of your help center.
These examples explain some different scenarios.
-
Scenario 1 - The user's browser language is a language that
is not enabled in the help center. The user sees the article in
the default language.
That is, a user with Polish (pl) set as their default browser language accesses this link: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/pl. The site is not translated into Polish so they are redirected to the default language site (support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us), and will see the content in English.
-
Scenario 2 - The user's browser language is a language that
is enabled in the help center, and there is translated content
in that language available for that article. The user
automatically sees the translated content.
That is, if a user's default browser language is French, they see all articles that have been translated into French, even if the user has not specified the locale (fr) in the URL. If they access the link https://support.zendesk.com/hc, they are automatically redirected to https://support.zendesk.com/hc/fr.
-
Scenario 3 - The user's browser language is a language that
is enabled in the help center, but there is no translated
content in that language available for that article. The article
will not show up in the browser language's version of the help
center. If the user tries to navigate manually to that article,
in a language that it has not been translated into, then the
user sees a page error, or is redirected to the home page for
that language.
For example, a user with French set as their default browser language sees all articles that have been translated into French, but if any articles are not translated, they get a message that the page does not exist. This is because the fr locale has been set up, but is not populated for every article.
In all examples, if a user wants to manually change the language that they view an article in, then they must specify a different locale in the URL or change the language in the help center language drop-down menu. If the language is enabled in the help center, and has translated content available for that article, they'll see that content.
For example, if you type the URL https://support.zendesk.com/hc/de, you'll see German content for that page, regardless of your default browser language. Specifying a locale in the URL does not change the language in which you are browsing the help center. To browse the help center in a different language, you must use the language drop-down menu.
If you provide only some of your content in other languages, consider one of the following solutions:
- Redirect untranslated articles to an existing language
- Add a default language version of the article to the translation page. In our example, this would mean copying the English article into the French translation page. See delivering content in your supported languages.
Removing a help center language
You can disable any language you have enable in your help center by deleting it in the help center Languages page.
To set up your help center for multiple languages
- In Guide, click the Settings icon () icon in the sidebar, then click
Language settings.
- Click the options menu beside the language you want to remove, then
click Delete.
The language is removed from your list of languages, without a confirmation dialog. You can enable it again if necessary by clicking Add new language.
- Click Save on the help center Language page when you are finished.
Changing a translated help center name
You can add a translated help center name when you enable a language. You can easily change the help center name for a language at any time.
To change a translated help center name
- In Guide, click the Settings icon () icon in the sidebar, then click
Language settings.
- On the help center Language page, click in the name field for any
language, then enter a new name.
- Click Save on the help center Language page when you are finished.
27 Comments
Hello,
If I delete a language, will all the help center articles in that language be archived? Thanks
Hello,
I have 5 languages on my help center. If an article is not translated in one language, is there a way to hide this language in the dropdown menu ?
Is there a configuration setting or method to serve off articles in all available language when the end-users language has not yet had the article translated?
EG: Bob is a native Esperanto speaker and reader, he search for "Rajdu mulon" in Guide/Help Center. There is no Esperanto article for this, but there are english and german versions.
English: How to Ride a Mule
German: Reite ein Maultier
How can one provide always provide results for a KB search that lists ALL the languages a article is available in?
Hello,
Thanks for reaching out! You must enable all of the languages that you want to support in your help center in order to serve off articles in all available languages that you want. You can choose from any of the Guide supported languages and most of the languages that are available by request.
If you choose a supported language, text that appears in the help center by default (for example, "search" and "comments"), is displayed in that language.
Kindly check this article here for you to be guided accordingly: Configuring your help center to support multiple languages
Let me know if you need further assistance.
Clifford James Lacson |Associate Customer Advocate|
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When creating a multi-language HC, is there an option to edit the welcome message/search bar placeholder to match the available languages?
Hey Karolina,
Thanks for reaching out on the Community post, I hope you are doing well! I would just like to understand which part of the welcome message/search bar placeholder are you referring to exactly? If you wouldn't mind expanding a little bit more or even with screenshots, I would be more than willing to help. If however you are not comfortable with posting information about your Zendesk account on this community post, please do let me know and we can work something out :) Have a great one!
Russell Chee | Senior Customer Advocacy Specialist | Melbourne, Australia
Hi Russell!
Our current HC welcome message reads Welcome to XYZ however I can't see a distinct option that would change this into French for us when setting up our Canadian Help Centre.
We also have wording in the search bar which once again, there doesn't seem to be an option to translate. Any ideas?
Hey Karolina,
Thanks for your response, it is much appreciated! Sounds like you're looking for a specific workflow with your multi-language Help Center. In this instance, let's turn your post into a ticket and work on it together as I may require a little bit more information about your account specific workflow. Keep an eye out for your emails!
Russell Chee | Senior Customer Advocacy Specialist | Melbourne, Australia
Hello everyone, I'm hoping someone can help me with my use case:
We serve multiple regions and, while we only need English, we need variations in specific words. Much of the content in the help center is the same and requires no translation. Is there a way to allow for users to surface all content in the Zendesk default language, but to view the translated article as per their browser setting?
It is not feasible for us to duplicate every article.
I believe we are having the same issue that Karolina is having. Our help center is not changing the welcome message to the language that is selected. It just stays in English.
Figured this out, had to use dynamic content and do a big run around to get it to work. Not very scalable and more manual work and updates than preferred.
Hi!
I am having a serious issue with the default settings of translations. We currently have 16 categories & 16 sections.
8 in English and 8 in Spanish.
We are a bilingual team- we manually write the articles with screenshots in each language (our platform exists in Spanish & English).
When I write one in English for example, and select category/section/tags etc then click to create a translation... it auto saves it to the same category/section.
If you try to move the translation to the Spanish category/section -- it warns you and then moves the English version to the spanish category/section as well.. making it an orphan article and it doesn't show in our help page.
This is incredibly frustrating and I need a solve ASAP.
Please help.
Hi,
Can I make it that when I change the status of an article in the main language (draft > published or published > unpublished) the status changes on all translated versions as well?
Thanks
Carlo
As it turns out, you'll need to do the steps on each translated article and there's no option to change it simultaneously for all translations.
Hi!
We are translating all of the content of our Help Center articles into German and French. Do web forms included in the Help center need to be manually translated, or there's a dynamic way to do this? Thanks
Michael Jenkins would you mind sharing how you solved the issue of translating the placeholder text in the search bar? i'm struggling with that myself.
i've created the dynamic content and added the placeholders to the code, but it's either not showing the translated version or it's making the search bar disappear entirely.
Any help would be very much appreciated!
Hi Matt,
I am happy to help the best I can. Here is how I did it:
I created the dynamic content first.
Then in the knowledge base, under the home_page.hbs I changed up just the line for the hero-title. Here is the whole section if it helps:
<section class="section hero">
<div class="hero-inner">
<h1 class="hero-title">{{dc 'how_can_we_help'}}</h1>
{{search submit=false instant=true class='search search-full' placeholder="Search..."}}
</div>
</section>
I believe that is all that was needed. I am not 100% sure. Lot has happened in past 3 months 😏
Hopefully this is helpful for you or someone else though.
Hi,
Thanks for the sharing, but we still got a problem that our FAQ, we used to got two languages(Chinese & English). We don't know why English version got missed, and show up the word like the photo below. If you know any way to fix it, please let us know!
Thank you!
Looking forward to your reply!
Best.
Hi Support,
As this would require some troubleshooting on your account's settings, I went ahead & created a ticket on your behalf. Please keep an eye out for our email!
Hello,
thank you for your support always. I would like to know more detailed about..."The language set for the user's current active session".
For example user profile language is set as English, but the user has some open French tickets, then the user's help center will be shown in French? (of course, in the case, the help center supports both languages, English and French)
The Help Center language is based on the browser language that the user has currently set up.
The following article will give you more detials on this topic:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408889241754-In-what-language-do-my-help-center-articles-display-to-my-customers-
"Every web browser has a language setting that is automatically detected when a user visits the help center."
Hi Anne Ronalter,
thank you for your comment, I'm happy for it!!
I understand your reference. But in this article its written like below. It means, if the user's language is English in user profile, the help center is shown in English even if the web browser language is set as French.
If not, please kindly explain what this article description mean.
The language that a user sees in your help center is based on defaulting to the following, in order of preference:
Hi, we want to implement a multi-language help center form. It seems that only the default field titles show in another language and not the ones we've manually added. Example of German format below. Is there a way to have the entire form translated into the desired language?
Also is there a way to have the knowledge base articles automatically translate for viewing based on users' choice of language? Thanks
Kenny Rohan I believe you are needing to add your ticket form fields into your Dynamic Content and then use those placeholders in the ticket fields: it would look similar to {{dc.jobsite}} instead of Jobsite. Here is an article to help explain this.
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408883892762-Translating-ticket-fields-using-dynamic-content
Hi there! At some point someone changed our default language to English (NZ) from American English. Now we have 231 Articles that are a mix of both and no easy way to swap them all to one or the other. The homepage of our guide is messy and incomplete in both "languages". Is there an easier way to define their current language as English (NZ) without having to manually edit, copy, and delete the American English translation?
It only means that when users access the Help Center the first time, the language will be set based on those following conditions. However, users can still set their language if the Help Center theme has the option for it. Like in the case of our own Help Center.
Hi Max,
Natively, it can only be done manually. Alternatively, you can use Help Center API to manage article translations.
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