Bulk Translate allows you to translate multiple articles from the Articles page in bulk.
You also have the option to translate all or specific sections of an individual article within the Article View, so you can manage translation tasks at scale. Refer to Translating All or Part of an Individual Article for more details about that.
For an overview of Translate, refer to Using Translate.
In this Article
Translating Articles with Bulk Translate
Source
Source help center language
Translation Settings
Destination
Articles or Images
Help Center Translation
Keep source language
Keep the previous images in the translation
Translate Images
Re-translating all images
Right-to-left languages (Hebrew)
Auto-translate untranslated categories or sections
Save translations locally for review
Save translations as draft in Zendesk
Overwrite if a translation already exists
Add Labels to Translation
Running the Translate
Updating Only the Images in Existing Translations
Reviewing the Translations
Updating Translations
Using Translate when Duplicating Articles between Help Centers with Different Languages
Translating Articles with Bulk Translate
- From the Articles page, select one or more articles that you want to translate (refer to Selecting Articles, Links, Media or Dynamic Content).
- Click Translate.
Source
Source help center language
The Source help center language automatically detects the language of the selected article(s).
If you have selected articles in more than one language, the relevant language codes are shown in the drop-down so you can select the language of the articles you want to translate and this updates the number of articles that will be translated.
Translation Settings
Click Translation Settings to display the Glossary, Translate Text, Translate Images and the Translation Notice. For details, refer to Translation Settings - Glossary, Translate Text, Translate Images, Translation Notice.
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Glossary allows you to control the translations for specific terms and phrases to maintain a specific brand voice or ensure that terms are consistent.
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Translate Text provides the instructions for ChatGPT to translate the article text. This is set initially as the default prompt.
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Translate Images provides the instructions for translating the text inside images, for all languages or for a specific language. Hebrew has built-in instructions that lay out the images right to left.
- Translations Notice can be used to add a disclaimer to articles translated with AI. This text is translated along with your article and inserted at either the beginning or the end of the translated version. You can use HTML to format the text.
Destination
Any changes you make to the settings for the Destination are stored locally on your computer when you run the translate and are initially redisplayed the next time you open the Translate. This allows you to set your own defaults. If you have more than one Help Center, the settings display the same for all Help Centers.
Articles or Images
At the top of the Destination, choose what to translate:
- Articles translates the full article. This is the default and works as described in this article.
- Images updates only the images in translations that already exist, without changing the translated text. Refer to Updating Only the Images in Existing Translations.
Help Center Translation
Select one or more languages that you want to translate to, or Select All languages. The drop-down shows the languages and the Zendesk Help Center Translation codes.
You can only select languages that you have enabled in your Help Center.
You can select all or more than one language in order to translate articles to multiple languages in one go. The following example shows the language being selected as both Spanish and French.
Keep source language
Keep source language is used if you want to create copies of the same language but in different locales without translating the text. For example, you would copy from "en-us" to "en-uk" so that both copies are using the same English language.
Keep the previous images in the translation
If a translation for the selected language already exists, Keep the previous images in the translation will keep the same images in the new translation as in the previous version. This is useful if you are using different images in the translation to those in the source article.
This setting is only for images and will not keep any videos that are different in the translation article. These are replaced with those from the source article.
Translate Images
Where articles contain images, you can use Bulk Translate to Translate Images. This uses AI to read the text in the images and translates this into the relevant language. This uses the Glossary (see below) and preserves non-text elements such as logos and icons.
The translated images are saved with a new file name in the Media Library. The files are saved as .png files.
Credits for Translate Images are separate to the Translate Credits. To purchase Credits for Translate Images, contact Support using the Live Chat or email support@swifteq.com.
If an image has already been translated and has not changed, the existing translation is reused and does not use a credit again. To translate it again, for example after changing the image instructions, use Re-translating all images.
To update only the images in translations that already exist, without translating the text again, use Images mode. Refer to Updating Only the Images in Existing Translations.
Re-translating all images
When Translate images is selected, you can also select Re-translate all images, including ones already translated. This option is also available in Images mode.
Use this after you change the image translate instructions in the Translation Settings, so that images translated before the change are updated too. Without it, only new or changed images are translated.
Right-to-left languages (Hebrew)
When images are translated into Hebrew, the screenshots are laid out right to left, like a Hebrew user interface: side menus move to the right, rows, columns and tabs read from right to left, and text is right-aligned. Logos, photos, numbers, dates and English product names are kept as they are.
This uses built-in instructions for Hebrew, which you can view and adjust in the Translate Images tab of the Translation Settings. Refer to Changing the Translate Images Instructions.
As with all automatic translations, check a few translated images before translating a large number of articles.
Auto-translate untranslated categories or sections
You can translate the Categories and Sections if these do not already exist.
If the translation for the Category or Section exists, this will not be changed by the Bulk Translate.
If the translation for the Category or Section in the Source article has changed, currently this will not be updated.
You can check in the Articles page for any articles that do not have a translation for the Category or Section. The following example shows some articles without a Category or Section.
Save translations locally for review
This saves your article translations locally in Swifteq without pushing them to Zendesk. This allows the translation to be reviewed and corrected if needed before being saved to Zendesk. The article translations are marked as "Under Review".
You can review the translation in the Editor and make any changes then save the translation to Zendesk. Refer to Reviewing Automatic Translations.
If you select this option, the following two options for Destination are automatically disabled.
Save translations as draft in Zendesk
Save translations as draft in Zendesk is initially checkmarked by default. This ensures that the translation is unpublished in Zendesk and saved as a "Draft" article so you can manually check and edit it before publishing.
As an alternative, you can select Save translation locally for review. This will keep the translation(s) on the Swifteq servers without pushing them to Zendesk. Once you have reviewed the local translation and it is ready, you can then publish it to Zendesk.
Overwrite if a translation already exists
You can run the Translate with Overwrite if a translation already exists selected.
- If you select both Overwrite if a translation already exists and Save translations as draft in Zendesk, the translation article will be unpublished so users will NOT have access to it until it has been republished from Zendesk.
- If the translation article exists, when Save translations as draft in Zendesk is selected you need to also checkmark Overwrite if a translation already exists to perform the translation.
Add Labels to Translation
When running the translate for anything except Save translations locally for review, you can add one or more Labels to the translations. This adds the Label(s) you enter both to the article in the Source language that is being translated and to the article(s) that have been translated.
You can filter the articles by the Labels in Help Center Manager or in Zendesk so the translations can be easily identified and checked. The Labels need to be removed in Zendesk.
When entering the label, this will automatically replace any uppercase characters with lowercase, any spaces are replaced with an underscore (_) and any special characters are removed.
In the following example, two Labels were entered as "Check Translations" and "Attn Joe" and are replaced as "check_translations" and "attn_joe".
When the translations have been checked, you can remove the Label with the Change Labels function in Bulk Actions. Refer to Bulk Actions - Duplicate, Change Labels, Reset Votes, Change Location, Change Article Status, Change Permissions, Rollback from Zendesk, Save to Zendesk and Delete from Zendesk.
Running the Translate
- Make your selections for Source and Destination.
- Click Translate.
While the Translate is running you can click Cancel Task to cancel.
When prompted to confirm, click OK to continue with the Cancel Task, or click Cancel to let the Translate continue.
The Translate function creates the articles which are translations of the original article(s).
The translation is created with the same article settings (such as the settings for "Visible to", "Author", etc.) as the original article.
If this happens, you need to re-enable the Content Block in the translated article and re-publish that article from Zendesk. The original article will not be changed and it will keep its Content Blocks.
Labels are not translated.
Any attached documents are not translated.
While Translate is running, you cannot run this on any other articles until it has completed.
When the Translate is complete, a message displays. You can click the link to display the translations that have been completed successfully and display these directly from the message.
You will also receive an email. This contains links to articles that were successfully translated.
The email also includes links to any articles that could NOT be translated. If any articles could NOT be translated the most likely cause is that the articles selected already have a translation in the same language. In this case, the email shows the title of the article(s) that was being translated (not the title of the translations).
You can run the Translate on these articles again and checkmark the option Overwrite if a translation already exists option in the Translate dialog to replace the existing translations with a new one.
You add a translation for a Category or Section by editing the Category or Section, selecting the language and entering the translation.
Updating Only the Images in Existing Translations
Use Images mode when your articles already have translations and you only want to translate or refresh their images, for example after taking new screenshots. The translated title and text are not changed and no Translate Credits are used, only Credits for Translate Images.
- From the Articles page, select the articles in the source language.
- Click Translate.
- In the Destination, click Images.
- Select one or more languages.
- If needed, select Re-translate all images, including ones already translated to translate every image again (refer to Re-translating all images).
- If needed, select Save translations locally for review or Save translations as draft in Zendesk, and add Labels.
- Click Update images.
In Images mode, the dialog shows how many Credits for Translate Images you have left. The following options are hidden because they do not apply: Keep source language, Keep the previous images in the translation, Translate Images (always on in this mode), Auto-translate untranslated categories or sections and Overwrite if a translation already exists (the existing translation is always updated).
How the images are updated
- The images in the source article are translated, and each translated image replaces the image in the same position in the translation.
- Images that are not translated, such as animated GIFs or images without text, keep the image the translation already has.
- The translation keeps its current status: a published translation stays published and a draft stays a draft, unless you select Save translations as draft in Zendesk.
- If you select Save translations locally for review, the updated translation is saved in Swifteq and marked as "Under Review" instead of being pushed to Zendesk.
- If an image has already been translated and has not changed, it is reused and does not use a credit again, unless you select Re-translate all images, including ones already translated.
If you cannot select Images, there are no Credits for Translate Images left. To purchase Credits for Translate Images, contact Support using the Live Chat or email support@swifteq.com.
Skipped articles
An article is skipped, and nothing is changed, when:
- There is no existing translation in the selected language.
- The translation and the source article have a different number of images.
- The translation has no images to update.
- There are no Credits for Translate Images left.
When the update is complete, a message shows how many images were translated, in how many articles, and how many articles were skipped. Hover over the skipped articles to see the reason for each one. You will also receive an email with the updated and the skipped articles.
Reviewing the Translations
The automatic translations may not be 100% accurate and you should always check the articles as the translation may require some manual editing.
The method for reviewing translations depends on how the options were set for the automatic translation either. Refer to Reviewing Automatic Translations.
Updating Translations
To update translations:
- Changes can be made manually either in Zendesk, or in the Help Center Manager Editor.
- In the Help Center Manager Editor, you can translate the entire article(s) again using Bulk Translate as described above.
You need to also select Overwrite if a translation already exists. Refer above to Overwrite if a translation already exists.
- You can also display the Translate from the Article View by clicking Translate or Article Translations and either translate the entire article or parts of it (refer to Translating All or Part of an Individual Article).
- To update only the images in existing translations, use Images mode in Bulk Translate. Refer to Updating Only the Images in Existing Translations.
Using Translate when Duplicating Articles between Help Centers with Different Languages
When using the Duplicate function, the articles are always copied to the destination Help Center in the same language as the source articles (refer to Duplicating Articles).
If you want to copy articles between Help Centers with different languages, you can Duplicate the articles to the destination Help Center, and then use the Translate function in the destination Help Center to add the articles to the Help Center with the different language. In the Translate, you can also keep the same language as the source by setting the option Keep source language.
The following is an example of when you would use this method.
- The source Help Center is English UK (en-gb)
- The destination Help Center is English Ireland (en-150).
- For this example, when you run the Translate, you would enable the setting Keep source language to run the "translation" with the same language.
The following are the steps.
- In the destination Help Center, temporarily add the language for the articles that will be duplicated. This is added as the same as the source language. In the example, temporarily add the language English UK (en-gb) to the destination Help Center,
- Copy the Categories and Sections to this language in the destination Help Center and, if needed, make any changes to the translations for these.
- From the source Help Center language, Duplicate the articles to the destination Help Center. This automatically copies the articles in the same language as the source articles, which is the temporary language that was added (in this example, English UK).
- In the destination Help Center, run Translate on the articles that have been Duplicated.
The translation is from the language that was added temporarily to the required language of the destination Help Center.
In this example, the Translate is from English UK to English Ireland.
If required, as in this example, you can enable the setting Keep source language which runs the "translation" with the same language. - In the destination Help Center, delete the articles added for the temporary language. You can do this via Zendesk.
- Remember to run the Quick Sync in the destination Help Center.