Supporting Additional Languages

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If you're looking for information about using our translations manager, Crowdin, please see our help document for translators.

Introduction

At ControlShift we believe that the movements we support are at their most powerful when they're made of up of diverse supporters from many different backgrounds. For many of organizations, embracing the diversity of their supporters includes supporting the platform in multiple languages. 

The ControlShift team officially supports English and Spanish. For those languages, the platform translations are provided by our team and are immediately available to any organizations that are interested in operating in those languages.  The platform has also been translated into other languages. These additional translations have been provided by other ControlShift-using organizations.

This article will walk you through allowing site visitors to use your site in one of the fully translated languages. If you're interested in using one of the partially translated languages, or a language not listed below, please see our information about Crowdin.

If you want to use one of the completed translations or edit your supported languages, go to the admin homepage > Settings  > Time Zone & Locale > Manage Locales.

This page has three lists of languages:

• Supported Locales: These languages are available to all site visitors.
• Beta Locales: These languages are only visible to org admins. When transitioning to supporting a new language, you may want to initially the leave the language as a beta locale until all organization-specific content is translated into the new language.
• Available Locales: These are languages that are supported by ControlShift, but are not currently visible to anyone on your site.

Adding a New Language

To add a new language, go to the admin homepage > Settings  > Time Zone & Locale > Manage Locales > Available Locales section, find the language you want to offer on the site, and click Add. (The ID codes used for these languages are at the bottom of this article.)

After clicking to Add a new language, it will be added to the Beta Locales section of this page. (Again, beta locales are not visible to regular site visitors until they're published and become a supported locale.) In this Beta Locales view, you'll see the percentage of content that has been translated into the new locale.

To start adding translations for the organization-specific content, click the Translate link.

This page will show you a breakdown of where the untranslated content is housed. Note that the Content categories here are the same as the categories included in Settings > Content.

From here, clicking a category name will bring you to a page detailing the pieces of content included in the category. If the content has a check mark in the locale's column, then it has been translated. To translate the content, click the content name.

From here, you'll see the current text in your organization's default language. Click the Translate tab to see a list of the languages that have been added to the site. Choose the language you'd like to add content for and click Translate.

The translation page will again show the current text in the site's primary language. Enter a translation for the text and click Save Translation.

If you need to edit a translation at any time, return to the admin homepage > Settings > Content. From here, click into the correct category and piece of content > Translate  > Edit Translation.

Once you've completed translating organization-specific text into the new language, or whenever you're ready to make the new translation visible to your supporters, return to the Manage Locales page (admin homepage > Settings > Time Zone & Locale > Manage Locales) and click to Publish the translation. This will move the translation from beta, which is only visible to site admins, and make it a supported locale, which is visible to all site visitors.

Once your site has more than one published language, a language drop down will be added to the footer.

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Removing a supported locale

If you've added a locale to your site, but want to remove it, you can do so from the Manage Locales page (admin homepage > Settings > Time Zone & Locale > Manage Locales.

If the language you want to remove is currently included in the Supported Locales section, click the Edit link at the end of the locale's row. On the edit locale page, there's a checkbox labeled Visible. Unchecking this box will remove the language from the Supported Locales section and demote the language to a Beta Locale (which is only visible to admins).

If the language is listed as a Beta Locale, click the x button (in the Remove column) of the language's row. This will move the language to an Available Locale only.

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Adding Additional Translations

If you're interested in adding a language that's not listed on the Manage Locales page (admin homepage > Settings > Time Zone & Locale > Manage Locales), send us a support email (support@controlshiftlabs.com). We use a translation app for our site, so if you have a staff person or volunteer who is fluent in your desired language they can easily contribute to the translation.

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ControlShift Supported Languages