How to translate custom texts

If you have clients worldwide, you need your Help Center to be seen in different languages. Lotus Themes can help you with it. All you need is to choose the right Zendesk plan and enjoy. See how it works below.

Our themes fully support Zendesk's multilingual feature. You can provide your customers service in 40+ languages.

Zendesk automatically identifies a user’s language and switches the language of the Help Center accordingly.

What can be translated into 40+ languages  :

• Help Center content. If you create articles in different languages, the user sees them converted to his language.
• Basic Help Center elements: buttons, comments, search boxes, article and writer details, welcome messages, service alerts, etc. All of them will be translated into the requested language.
• Additional Help Center elements created under the customization service: custom-made icons, notifications, callout boxes, text in custom elements, etc.

Important

The multilingual feature is available as a part of the Professional and Enterprise Zendesk plans.

If you have multiple languages enabled in your help center and you want to translate the default English texts of a theme, you can use the Dynamic Content functionality of Zendesk.

This feature allows you to put text translations into different languages in named placeholders. Using named placeholders allows Zendesk to display the right language text to the visitor.

Short version

So how do you translate texts such as "How can we help?" above the search field, titles of custom blocks, etc.?

For text values in the settings panel of a theme, just specify the name of a dynamic content placeholder without {{dc. and }}. For example, if you already have a placeholder {{dc.hc_how_can_we_help}}, just enter hc_how_can_we_help.

Long version

In the example below, we will replace the default text "How can we help?" with a multilingual version and add a translation for the French version.

1. First, you need to create a dynamic content placeholder for a corresponding text. Go to the Admin -> Dynamic content -> Add item.
2. Fill in the information for the placeholder.
   • Enter "hc_how_can_we_help" (without quotes) in the Dynamic content item title field. It's also useful but not necessary to add "hc_" prefix for the placeholders that are used in the help center.
   • Select "English" as the default language.
   • Enter "How can we help?" in the content field.
   • Click on the "Create" button.
3. Add a translation by clicking on the "add variant" link. 
4. Select the necessary language and fill in the content and click on the "Create" button.
5. Now go to the Theming center and click on a theme you want to edit.
6. In the settings panel, click on the "Translations" title and enable the "Use dynamic content translations" option.
7. In the "Hero unit title" field, enter the name of our placeholder: hc_how_can_we_help. Note that you need to enter it without curly braces and "dc.".
   
   
8. Save the changes.