Enable a language

Adding a language has two states (active and disabled) and an on-demand translation step. New languages start disabled so you can run translation and review before customers see anything.

1. Open the Languages tab

Go to Settings → Knowledge and click the Markets and Languages tab. You’ll see the list of languages already configured, each with an Active / Disabled toggle and a translation coverage panel.

2. Click Add language

Pick a language code from the picker. Atender supports the standard BCP 47 codes:

• en — English
• es — Spanish
• fr — French
• de — German
• nl — Dutch
• it — Italian
• pt — Portuguese
• pt-BR — Portuguese (Brazil)
• sv — Swedish
• no — Norwegian
• da — Danish
• fi — Finnish
• ja — Japanese
• zh — Chinese (Simplified)

Regional variants (en-GB, pt-BR) are supported when you need them. Use the base code (en, pt) when one variant is enough.

3. The language is created — disabled

A new secondary language starts in Disabled status. The Active toggle is off. Translations have not been generated yet — Atender doesn’t auto-translate on language add, you trigger it explicitly in the next step.

This is by design: translation uses AI inference and costs money. Spinning up translation for a language you’re still evaluating would waste credit.

4. Run translation via the Translation Sync card

Click into the new language. The Translation Sync card shows current coverage:

• Articles translated — 0 / total initially
• Categories translated — 0 / total
• Subcategories translated — 0 / total

Click Sync Translations to queue jobs for everything that’s missing. Job progress polls live (every few seconds). Statuses you’ll see:

• pending — Queued, not yet started
• scanning — Inventorying what needs translation
• translating — AI translation in progress
• completed — Done; coverage panel updated
• failed — Hit an error — usually transient; re-run Sync Translations to retry

Depending on KB size, this takes minutes (small KB, ~50 articles) to longer (hundreds of articles). The Sync Translations button stays available — clicking it again only translates what’s still missing.

If you need to start over (e.g. after major content edits), Force Retranslate All runs every article through translation again, ignoring existing translations. This costs significantly more — only use it when you’ve changed protected terms or made structural content updates.

5. Spot-check a few translations

Before activating, open a few translated articles and read them:

• Switch the article preview to your new language.
• Does the title sound natural?
• Are protected terms (your brand name, product name) preserved untranslated?
• Any awkward phrasings worth a manual fix?

If you find recurring issues with terms that should stay untranslated, add them to the Protected Terms tab — that’s faster than editing every article. For one-off fixes, edit the translation directly.

6. Flip the Active toggle

When you’re satisfied with coverage and quality, switch the language’s Active toggle on. The language goes live on the public help center within seconds. Customers whose browser prefers this language start seeing the translated content.

You can flip the toggle off again at any time — translations are preserved, customers stop seeing the language.

What happens after activation

• Article edits do not auto-translate. When you publish an edit, the original-language article updates; secondary-language versions stay on the old translation until you click Sync Translations again. This is intentional — translation runs cost-aware. Set a quarterly or monthly cadence for re-syncing.
• New articles do not auto-translate. Same reason. After publishing a batch of new articles, run Sync Translations to pick them up.
• Disabled languages keep their translations. Toggling Active off doesn’t delete anything. Flipping it back on makes the existing translations visible again.

For more detail on what counts as “fully translated” in each entity, see Translation completeness.

Removing a language

Click the Trash icon next to the language. There’s no confirmation dialog — the action runs immediately, and the language plus its translations are removed.

If you might want the language back later, toggle Active off instead. Disabled keeps translations; Remove deletes them.

Order of articles in translation jobs

When you click Sync Translations, jobs run in roughly publish-date order — recently published articles translate first. If you have priority articles, publish edits to them before running Sync so they jump to the front.

Common gotchas

• No “Pending” state exists. Languages are either Active or Disabled. New languages start Disabled. There’s no automatic flip when translations finish — you toggle Active yourself.
• Translation doesn’t run on save. Editing an article doesn’t queue a re-translation. Run Sync Translations to refresh translations after content changes.
• The default language can’t be removed. Change the default first if you really need to remove your default language. Changing the default is heavier — re-run Force Retranslate All afterwards.
• Protected terms apply globally. If you mark “Atender” as a protected term, it stays “Atender” in every language. See Manage protected terms.