Help Center in multiple languages

Localize the Help Center to be in your customers' native languages with automatic AI translations.

Written By Markus from Featurebase

Last updated 15 days ago

Multilingual help center in Featurebase.

Overview

You can set up your Help Center to automatically support multiple languages to provide help in the languages your customers speak. You can either have Featurebase automatically translate your help center using AI or manually provide all translations yourself.

We’ll automatically show your users the correct version of the Help Center based on their browser’s language settings. They can also switch between languages manually.

Here are the languages we currently support →

Configuring languages

Setting up multilingual support in the help center's settings.

The default language should be the one that the majority of your users speak. It’s also the fallback language for visitors whose browsers are set to unsupported languages.

To add additional languages:

  1. Go to Settings → Help center → Languages & translation

  2. Under language settings, click + Add Language

  3. From the dropdown, select your desired language

  4. Translate the Help Center UI texts for the language you added

  5. Repeat this process for each language added

  6. Choose which language should be the default

Note: The default language should be the one that the majority of your users speak. It’s also the fallback language for visitors whose browsers are set to unsupported languages.

Automatic AI translation

Enabling automatic AI help center translations with protected glossary terms.

Featurebase can automatically translate your entire help center, so you only need to write articles in one base language. Translations in other languages are kept up to date automatically using AI.

To set this up:

  1. Go to Settings → Help center → Languages & translation

  2. Add protected terms to your glossary (for example, your brand name or product terms)

  3. Click Save glossary.

  4. Enable automatic translations

  5. And you’re done!

Notes:

  • AI translations are usage-based. Each workspace includes 250,000 free characters per month, then $0.04 per additional 1,000 characters.

  • When you update an article in your base language, translations are automatically updated after publishing. You never need to maintain them manually!

  • Protected terms in the glossary & code snippets are never translated, ensuring consistent terminology across all languages.

  • You can always edit individual translations for articles and collections from the help center dashboard if needed. (see below)

Manual translation

If you’re not using automatic AI translations, each article and collection must be translated manually.

Translating & organizing content

Starting the manual help article translation process from the dashboard.

After enabling other languages, you can see all the untranslated collections and articles. For the best user experience, we recommend translating all collections and titles in your Help Center.

To start translating collections:

  1. Go to Dashboard → Help center

  2. Switch to the language you’re translating (from the upper right corner)

  3. Click ‘Add translation’ next to the collections and sub-collections

If a collection isn’t translated, it won’t appear on your Help Center’s homepage. Collections must contain at least one translated article to be visible.

Similarly, sub-collections need to be translated to be visible. However, even if a sub-collection is not translated, its translated articles will still be displayed.

Translating help articles

Starting the help article translation process from the dashboard.

After translating collection, you can start translating your articles:

  1. Go to Dashboard → Help center

  2. Switch to the language you’re translating to see untranslated articles

  3. Open an article that ‘Requires translation’ or create a new one

  4. Translate the article and click ‘Publish article’ on the top right

Switching article's language versions from the dashboard to add translations.

Important: If you translate articles within a collection, make sure to also translate the collection title. If not, the collection won’t appear on your Help Center’s homepage. However, the articles will still show up in searches and can be shared with customers directly.

Tracking articles’ translation status

Switching article's language versions from the dashboard to add translations.

You can switch between the language versions of the article from the top left. You can also see which articles have been translated and which ones have not.

  • Green means that the article has been translated & published

  • Purple means that the translation has been started, but the article is in draft

  • Gray means it has not been translated

FAQ