With Articles, you can configure your Help Center to work in multiple languages, so you can provide self-service support in the languages your customers speak.
How does Articles support multiple languages?
First, you define the languages to support in your Help Center, like English and French for example.
Then all your collections, sections, and articles will have the option to add a translated version for each language. The structure and organization of your Help Center is automatically applied to all languages, so it’s easy to manage, and easy for visitors to navigate, no matter which language they use.
Though the Help Center can be configured to work in multiple languages, Articles themselves are not automatically translated in Intercom.
All you need to provide are translated versions of your collection and section names, and your article content. We’ll automatically show the correct version to anyone who visits your Help Center (based on their browser’s language setting). Visitors to your Help Center can also switch between languages manually:
In your Help Center, under ‘Collections’ on the left, you’ll see all of your collections have a version for each language, which you can switch between when editing:
And all your articles also have a version for each language:
Note: If you have a supported language (e.g. French), and a French visitor lands on your Help Center, they’ll only see the articles that you have translated. They can switch to your default language to see any articles you haven’t translated.
Pro Tip: Install Google Analytics on your Help Center to see which of your articles are viewed by speakers of the languages you want to support, and translate those articles first.
When you send articles to customers in Intercom Inbox, or share them with the Article inserter app, you choose which version of the Article to use:
Tip: The Article Inserter app lets you share your articles in the Messenger home, Messages, Custom Bots, and more. Read this guide to find out how.
What languages does Articles support?
Articles currently supports 45 languages: Arabic, Bengali, Bosnian, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, German (Formal), Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latviski, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Simplified Chinese, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and Англи хэл (Mongolian).
Note: Multilingual does support right to left Articles. This does not require any work on your end to set up, it should work automatically when you are creating Articles.
Configure your Help Center to support multiple languages
Before adding a new language, set the default language for your Help Center. This should be the most common language spoken by your customers. It’s also the language they’ll see if their browser is set to a language your Help Center doesn’t support.
To set the default language, go to Articles, then ‘Help Center settings’ in the menu on the left, and you can choose a default language under 'General' tab > Default language:
Important: Any existing articles you have will be linked to this language, so make sure it is the language they are written in.
Then, to add an additional language click ‘+ Add language’:
Next, add a translation of the page title and header text to show in your Help Center for each language, you can do that by navigating to the 'Header' section in the 'Styling' tab:
Important: If any of your supported languages are missing a page title you will see an error message saying "Make sure that you fill in the title for all languages."
Organize your Help Center in all languages with translated collections
To ensure the best experience for visitors to your Help Center you should add a translated name for every collection and section. Then people can browse your Help Center to find the info they need, in any language you support.
To do this, go to Articles, select Collections, and switch to the language you’d like to add translations for:
Note: If you don’t translate the name of the collection, it won’t appear on the home page of your Help Center. Each collection must also contain at least one translated article to be visible in your Help Center.
On any collections without a translation you’ll see ‘Add a name’ and the collection status will be 'Needs a title':
Open the collection, and enter a translated name and description here:
Tip: Collection names and descriptions appear in Google search results, so use terms your customers are likely to search for.
After translating the collection, you should also add a translated version of your section names:
Note: Section names without a translation won’t appear in your Help Center, but the articles in that section will, if they have been translated.
You can reorder your collections and sections from any language view, and this order will apply across all languages.
Translate your Articles into multiple languages.
Now that your Help Center supports multiple languages, you’ll need to add translated versions of your articles. Read this guide to learn how.
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