Multilingual content in Confluence?

[Tsol]

Hi,

is there a way to have multilingual content in Confluence?

There would be a default language of the content and user could change to another language if he wants.

Thanks,

Kostas

[Oli S]

For this you could use the Language Plufin from bitvoodoo:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/28648

[Tsol]

Hi,

thanks for the help.

I've tested the plugin. It's not bad but i would like to have something like a select list in the page with the available languages so the user could choose.

[Deniz Yalçın]

I've stumbled upon this company which looks very promising. I'll delve deeper into their workflow and further analyze their translation services including their TM, content re-use strategy, versioning process etc but my hopes are high. I'll maybe run a demo with them and report my conclusions back here.

Lingotek

[Nicolas Casel]

Thanks @Deniz Yalçın for this link. Have you ever tested this solution?

[Deniz Yalçın]

Atlassian has gathered all the tools providing some kind of content or page translation support in this best practices article but the problem still doesn't seem to have been handled completely:

How can I translate Confluence page content?

[Daniel Schmidt]

We built a two-language wiki for our customer knowledgebase and are now developing a real multilingual version. The bitvoodoo Language Plugin isn't quite what we needed.

Our solution was to use Adaptavist Theme Builder, wich allows hierarchical spaces. Each language has its own first-level space (these spaces have no content itself, they serve as a node and homepage for each language). The spaces wich contain the content are sub-spaces.

This structure allowed us to have localized menus etc. We also had to localize the search and a number of user macros that do a lot of reporting (related topics and pages, for example).

Finally, we wrote a user macro for switching between different languages. If the page titles in the two languages are identical, the macro doesn't need a parameter, if they are not, a parameter with the page title must be set on the English page, on the German page (default language), it is not necessary.

The language switch button only appears, if the page exists in the other language. This is quite helpful for the technical writer, since he doesn't have to check beforehand. The macro simply is part of our page template. The only thing one has to do is to enter the page title of the default language (in our case German), when adding the english version.

The macro code is as follows:

#if($space.getKey().substring(0,2) == "EN")#set($space=$space.getKey().substring(2))#set($linktext="!ABOUT:Home^switch.png|align=left,hspace=4! Deutsche Version")#else#set($space= "EN" + $space.getKey())#set($linktext="!ABOUT:Home^switch.png|align=left,hspace=4! English version")#end
#if("$!parampage" == "")#set($parampage=$content.getTitle())#end
{move-to:target=i18n-wrapper}
{set-data:switchto|hidden=true}$!parampage$!{null}{set-data}
{report-block}{content-reporter:types=page|spaces=$space}
{text-filter:data:switchto|value=$parampage}
{content-reporter}
{report-body}{div:class=i18n}{report-link:content:url}$linktext$!{null}{report-link}{div}{report-body}
{report-block}
{move-to}

At the moment, we are trying to extend this solution to a multi-language platform. So far, this solution works fine, although requires some extra work

[Reinhard Mayr]

Dear @Daniel Schmidt, it has been a while since you posted that reply. However, we are facing the same situation I wanted to ask whether there is some more information or even a demo you could share?

Thanks for your efforts!

Reinhard

[Kilian Bazin]

Dear Daniel Schmidt I agree with Reinhard : can we watch a demo of that solution ?

[Ali Dursun]

@Kostas

i am looking also for a multilingual content wiki in confluence, where i can switch the language.

Did you get more information how-to do that in confluence; any new experiences there for this topic. Or may be you have made some tests / demos??

The main question is; how could we achieve a switchable wiki?
What would be the best practices here fore.

kind regards

Dursun

[Tsol]

Hey Ali,

to be honest i haven't done a lot of things on that. The readymade solutions were not exactly the things i wanted.

At the moment we are just creating separate pages for every language we need. Is a bit primitive approach but it was the fastest thing to do.

Cheers,

Kostas

[Deleted user]

Dear Kostas,

I read that you tried bitvoodoo's app "Language Plugin" in 2012. As the technical writer at bitvoodoo, I'd like to inform you that we've made some major improvements to our app since then :-) 

It is now called "Translations for Confluence", available for Server & DC:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/28648/translations-for-confluence?hosting=server&tab=overview

The app also translates page titles, which will then be used in the page tree, breadcrumbs, search, etc. The app also features a language drop-down to quickly switch between the different translations available on any page.

Since we invested heavily in this app, it is now a paid app.

I just published a blog post on the subject as well: https://www.bitvoodoo.ch/blog/2020/9/23/use-confluence-with-multiple-languages

Perhaps you want to give our app another try and see if it useful to you?

Best, Cora