About Managing Languages
In Userlane you can manage languages and translations both directly in the Userlane Portal and Editor as well as offline by exporting and translating texts in a .csv or .xlsx file, then importing them back into Userlane.
In this article we'll cover the following topics:
Adding and publishing languages
You can create a new language in the “Customize” - “Languages” section of the Portal. Please note that Userlane follows specific priorities to detect which language is shown to end users, as outlined here.
The language name is displayed to identify the language.
The language key will be compared to the HTML and browser languages in order to automatically detect the language. It typically consists of the first two letters of the language name (e.g. English = EN) or 5 letters (e.g. American English = en-us).
Use the following ISO codes to organize your languages
The Copy-From option allows you to decide which language the texts of your new language should be copied from. This helps you to write the correct translations later.
If you no longer require a language, you can archive or delete it.
Archived languages cannot be published for any content but can always be moved back to the current languages.
Deleting a language will also remove all content associated with that language.
Publishing languages
After creating a language, you can work in this language and publish it.
Publish a language for all existing content in the “Customize” - “Languages” section via the dot menu next to the language you want to publish. Make sure you have existing texts in this language before publishing them here.
Publish a language for specific chapters or Guides only in the manage section using the options next to the respective Guide/chapter. This allows you to translate and publish your Guides in a new language step by step. Make sure to activate a language for the chapter and for the Guide to show the chapter title, subtitle, and Guide texts in this language.
- Be mindful to ensure texts are updated in all public languages before setting content live.
💡 Good to know
- We support right-to-left languages like Hebrew or Arabic, but adjusting formatting for right-to-left is not currently available.
Auto-Translation
You can use Userlane auto-translation for both Guides and Messages to quickly and easily translate content into your target languages.
- Entire Guides or individual Guide steps can be auto-translated in the Userlane Editor. For more detailed information, please refer to this article.
- Messages content (Announcements, Standard Surveys, and NPS Surveys) can be auto-translated in the Userlane Portal when you create or edit Messages.
ℹ️ The "auto-translate" feature relies on the OpenAI API, a service provided by Microsoft. No Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or Sensitive Personal Information (SPI) is being processed when used. No prompts or completions are stored in the model during these operations, and prompts and completions are not used to train, retrain or improve the models.
For additional questions, please don't hesitate to contact your Customer Success Manager or our Support team.
Manual Translation
You can also choose to manually translate your Userlane content in the Portal or Editor, or by exporting your texts, translating them offline, and then importing the translations back into Userlane.
We recommend having a dedicated process for translations involving the export/import approach and that you regularly export your texts after bigger changes, so you can better track your work.
To translate your content into different languages, you can use our text import/export feature:
Download all your existing texts
Download texts for a specific chapter or Guide only,
update the texts for each language, and
upload the new file.
You can use excel (XLSX) or comma-separated values (CSV) formats for export and import.
ℹ️ Important
- Any "<missing element>" placeholders in the exported text will be replaced with relevant info box content or localized links upon import.
- Modifying the file (including the original language) will apply changes after importing, even to the original language. To import languages, delete other "language" columns in the exported excel file.
- Identify each language using the language code in the first row (e.g., "en"). Do not delete or change the first 2 columns.
Best Practices
Choose a fallback language
Let's say you created two languages: English and French. We will match the corresponding language automatically for every French and English-speaking end user. To cover every other language, like German or Spanish, you can define a general fallback solution for every chapter or Guide.
Show the default language instead (Your Default Language). This option will show the text in the default language you defined in the “Customize” - “Language” section for all those users that don’t have a matching language.
Hide content for those users completely. This Guide will not appear in the Assistant for users without a matching language.
Where to edit the language for each content type
| Portal | Editor | Language Export/Import | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Guides | yes | yes | yes |
| Chapter Titles | yes | no | yes |
| Welcome Slide Text | yes | no | yes |
| Messages | yes | no | yes |
| Tooltips | no | yes | yes |
| Default Texts | yes | no | yes |
