Translating Articles with Bulk Translate

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
Help Center Translation
Keep source language
Keep the previous images in the translation
Auto-translate untranslated categories or sections
Save translations locally for review
Save translations as draft in Zendesk
Overwrite if a translation already exists
Running the Translate
Reviewing the Translations
Translations Saved as Draft in Zendesk
Translations Saved Locally for Review
Using Translate when Duplicating Articles between Help Centers with Different Languages
Updating Translations

From the Articles page, select one or more articles that you want to translate (refer to Selecting Articles, Links or Media).
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 and the Translation Prompt.

Glossary allows you to control the translations for specific terms and phrases to maintain a specific brand voice or ensure that terms are consistent. Refer to Using the Translate Glossary and Changing the Translation Prompt.
Translation Prompt provides the instructions for ChatGPT. This is set as the default prompt which you would usually leave as set. For details, refer to Using the Translate Glossary and Changing the Translation Prompt.

Destination

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 and these must be different to the language selected as the Source.

195 Translate Select a Translation.gif

Note: If you have added a new language to Zendesk, and this language is not showing as a selection in the Destination, you need to run a Quick Sync to update it from Zendesk so it is available in Help Center Manager. Refer to Syncing the Zendesk Data to Help Center Manager.

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.

196 Translate Select Multiple Languages.gif

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.

Important Notes: This setting only works if both articles, that is both the new translation and the previous one, have the same number of images.

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.

Auto-translate untranslated categories or sections

You can translate the Categories and Sections if these do not already exist.

Note: This is important as a translated article will never show if the translations aren’t present for the Category and Section, even when the article is published. This option is set as a default to ensure all translations show.
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.
292 Articles without Cateogry or Section.gif

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. After the review, you will need to save them to Zendesk separately and publish them from Zendesk.
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.

Note: If a translation for the article already exists, you need to also select Overwrite if a translation already exists. In this instance, the article will be unpublished so users will NOT have access to it until it has been republished.

Overwrite if a translation already exists

You can run the Translate with only Overwrite if a translation already exists selected.

283 Translate with Only Overwrite if a translation already exists.gif

If the translation article exists it is overwritten and will keeps the same status. So, if the translation was Published, it is updated and left as Published. If the translation was Draft, it is updated and left as Draft.
If the translation article does not exist, it will be created and will be automatically set as was Published,
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.

Note: If a translation already exists and you leave this uncheckmarked, the article will NOT be translated.

Running the Translate

Make your selections for Source and Destination. The following example is set so it will save the translations for review.
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.

Notes: The Translate function in Help Center Manager is not compatible with Content Blocks. This is due to Zendesk's API limitation. If you translate an article that has Content Blocks enabled, this will translate the content of the Content Block and convert it to normal text in the translated 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.

198 Translate Completed.gif

You will also receive an email. This contains links to articles that were successfully translated.

274 Translate Email.gif

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. 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.

Note: If you want the translations to be assigned automatically to the corresponding Category/Section, before translating the articles, you need to create a translation for both the Category and Section in the destination language. Otherwise the translated versions will not be assigned to a Category/Section.
You add a translation for a Category or Section by editing the Category or Section, selecting the language and entering the translation.

Reviewing the Translations

Translations Saved as Draft in Zendesk

If you have selected Save translations as draft in Zendesk, the translations show in the Articles page as "Draft" and is therefore unpublished in Zendesk. You then need to check and edit a draft translation before publishing.

You can check, edit and save the draft translation to Zendesk directly in Swifteq Help Center Manager. Refer to Editing an Article using the Help Center Manager Editor.
You can also check, edit and publish the draft translation from Zendesk.

Translations Saved Locally for Review

If you have selected Save translations locally for review, this saves your article translations locally in Swifteq without pushing them to Zendesk. In the Articles page, the translations show as both "Draft" and "Under Review" as in the following example. You can also set the Filter to show articles that are "Under Review".

275 Translate Articles Page with Translations Under Review.gif

You then need to manually check and edit a translation before publishing.

You can check, edit and save the translation to Zendesk directly in Swifteq Help Center Manager. Refer to Editing an Article using the Help Center Manager Editor. The draft then needs to be published from Zendesk. When saved to Zendesk, a translation shows under Drafts and with the Review Status as "In Progress".

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.

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).