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How are you handling new languages?

Kevin Bendixen
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We're currently translating our product to several languages and so the user will only know certain terms from our app in their respective language. We are however not at a point where we can translate all our helpdesk articles. So people will search for something for example in Dutch and it will never show any topic, because the helpdesk it not localized.

 

Did any of you run into this as well? How did you solve it?

Also opened a chat with Intercom about this, but maybe someone has some experience to share.

 

I know about the Lokalise integration, but it might be above our budget, maybe there is a different solution, via API or something.

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Best answer by Daniel F11 5 March 2021, 09:45

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Hello @kevin b​ 👋, How are you doing?

 

When I worked with Multi-Regional company, We made different Collections and assign different responsible persons from the local team. As I see it your case is relatively different from mine.

 

Are you going to translate only the knowledge base or the whole product?

 

Q - I know about the Lokalise integration, but it might be above our budget, maybe there is a different solution, via API or something.

A - Lokalise integration is a really good.

 

As for the API, it is possible to create some Custom development:

Intercom API <> Google Cloud Services - Translate (You can send Articles to Google Cloud and then add translated content back to the help center).

 

You can also request Google Translate integration inside Intercom help center in @Product Wishlist​ Group.

 

Let me know if you have questions about Intercom <> Google Cloud Integration.

I will be happy to help = )

Kevin Bendixen
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Hey @roy s11​ ,

I'm fine. Thanks for asking.

The plan currently is to only translate the product, some Google Ads and a few main landing pages on our website. For the time being, we will only offer support (chat, phone and help center) in German and English. So we don't really have local teams for all the other languages. We will have them in the future if those markets are relevant enough, though.

Eric Fitz
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@daniel f11​, I immediately thought of the Klaus team when I read Kevin's post - didn't you and the team have a great workaround for this using the Articles API?

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Hi @kevin b​ ,

 

As I mentioned, Intercom API <> Google Cloud Integration will be the best way in your case.

Let me know if you need more details about this integration, I will be happy to answer all of your questions.

 

Looking forward,

Best,

Roy

Kevin Bendixen
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@roy s11​ If I understand your suggestion, I would send the articles to Google translate via the API -> receive a translation -> then paste the translated content to the new language version of the existing article, right?

That would work in theory, but we have almost 200 articles and that would be a lot of work. Plus I would still have to deal with screenshots.

My newest idea was to catch the search term via the API, translate it in the back and then direct the users to the English version of the article.

 

But this might not be possible from what I could gather.

D

Indeed, @eric f11​ and @kevin b​ 😊 We used the Articles API to loop over the original articles and automatically create localised article versions in a second language (in our case it was Brazilian Portuguese). Happy to share the code!

Kevin Bendixen
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@daniel f11​ Thank you for chiming in. Does that script also automate the "creation" of the localized articles? Or did someone have to paste the translation into Intercom? If that step is automated, I would be very happy if you could share the code. Even if it doesn't really appreciate the insight of how you guys handled the situation.

D

The script automates the creation of localized articles! What it does not do:

 

  1. It does not publish articles (you need to publish them manually though this logic is easily adjustable in the script)
  2. It does not translate collection and section names (you need to do those manually afterwards though I suspect we could also automate that in the future)
  3. It does not replace embedded hyperlinks either (ex: so if you have an embedded link on your English articles pointing to other English articles, you won't have the localised articles pointing to other localised articles after executing the script; that's probably something I will need to fix next time I look into this)

 

The code is here: https://forum.intercom.com/s/question/0D52G00004jeHLsSAM/can-i-use-the-articles-api-to-translate-my-articles/p>

Kevin Bendixen
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@daniel f11​ Thank you, this is awesome. I will talk to our devs and forward them your solution. Again thank you so much

D

You're very welcome, Kevin! 😇

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