Enable a language
To enable a language, add it under Settings → Knowledge → Markets & Languages → Languages, then switch its Active toggle on. New secondary languages start Disabled, and nothing is translated into a disabled language. Switching Active on does two things at once: the language goes live on the public help center, and the automatic sync starts translating your content into it.
1. Open the Languages tab
Go to Settings → Knowledge, click the Markets & Languages tab, then the Languages sub-tab. You’ll see the Primary Language card, the Secondary Languages card with an Active / Disabled toggle on each language, and the Translation Sync card with coverage per secondary language.
2. Click Add Language
In the Secondary Languages card, click Add Language. Search by name or code, select one or more languages, then confirm. Atender uses standard BCP 47 codes. Some common ones:
en— Englishes— Spanishfr— Frenchde— Germannl— Dutchit— Italianpt— Portuguesept-BR— Portuguese (Brazil)sv— Swedishno— Norwegianda— Danishfi— Finnishja— Japanesezh— 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. Nothing has been translated yet — Atender doesn’t translate on language add, and the automatic sync skips disabled languages.
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. Switch Active on
When you’re ready for Atender to translate and serve the language, switch its Active toggle on. From then on:
- The language appears on the public help center.
- The automatic sync, which runs every 15 minutes, translates your published articles, categories, subcategories, and sections into it. Depending on KB size, the first sync takes minutes (small KB, ~50 articles) to longer (hundreds of articles).
Until an article’s translation is ready, customers reading in the new language see the default-language version of that article. Watch progress under Coverage per secondary language on the Translation Sync card. Job statuses and the super-admin-only Re-translate all control are covered in Sync translations.
5. Spot-check a few translations
Once the first sync has finished, open a few translated articles on the public help center — pick the language in the language switcher, or add ?lang= and the language code to the URL — and read them:
- Does the title sound natural?
- Are protected terms (your brand name, product name) preserved untranslated?
- Any awkward phrasings?
If you find recurring issues with terms that should stay untranslated or need a fixed translation, add them in Settings → Translation → Protected Terms. Existing translations don’t pick up the change until they’re regenerated, so ask a super admin to run Re-translate all afterward. Don’t fix a translation by hand: whenever the default-language article changes, the automatic sync retranslates it and replaces your edit.
6. Turn the language off if it isn’t ready
If the translations aren’t ready for customers, switch the language’s Active toggle off. Customers fall back to the default language, existing translations are preserved, and the automatic sync stops translating into the language until you switch it on again.
What happens after activation
Translations stay current on their own. Every 15 minutes the automatic sync translates new and edited published content into every active language, so there’s no button to press and no re-sync cadence to keep — see Sync translations. For what counts as “fully translated” in each entity, see Translation completeness.
To take the language offline later — or delete it entirely — see Disable or remove a language. Disabling keeps translations; removing deletes them.
Common gotchas
- No “Pending” state exists. Languages are either Active or Disabled. New secondary languages start Disabled, and switching Active on is what starts translation — nothing flips it for you.
- Translation doesn’t run on save. Saving an article doesn’t translate it immediately. The next automatic run picks up the change, usually within 15 minutes, and longer for a large knowledge base or a busy queue.
- The default language can’t be removed. Change the default first if you really need to remove it — see Disable or remove a language.
- Protected terms are scoped to the current KB partition or brand. If you see a KB or brand selector in the UI, switch to the target partition before adding brand-specific terms. See Manage protected terms.