How-to use unified workspace for several languages

Hi there - we're trying to put the new language feature to good use and planned to use a unified workspace for a series of workshops. Our constituency speaks German, English, Portugues, etc. We plan to create one workspace for all - letting people see the content in the language they choose. Now…

• What behaviour can we expect, when it comes to sending out registration e-mails to people, who have not yet registered? Can I set the language for users?
• What happens, when people reach the workspace for a first registration follwoing a link or URL? Is there a language/IP detection implemented that will show people a registration message in a language that works for them?

Thanks for clarification on this.

Best - Daniel

Hi Daniel, 

Our translation feature allows all users to choose their own language in the workspace, however as far as i know it cannot be used in emails and email sending. Thus emails from the workspace are set to the workspace language. 

You of course have the option to write your own messages and old messages can be used as templates and sent again. Thus you could make a version of all the languages you wish and send them once, then use the templates when needed. 

The translation of a workspace is not automatic, so all the content will be shown in the language it was written in. The translation happens once the user clicks on an icon in the top right corner of the workspace and chooses their language. Then all the content of the workspace will be translated. 

It might be a good idea to create some instructions, on how users can enable the translation. 

Daniel, we are very interested to hear how things work out for you. One thing I am thinking regarding emails that would it be better to:

• be able to send emails based on the translator setting (so you could write emails with the language they prefer)
• or should the emails be automatically translated if user chooses to consume content in different language

I think personally I would prefer the first option and full control regarding the emails.

Interesting question. What I do ist the following:

Write an e-mail in a language that works for me (usually English or German)

Use Deepl.com to get a translation into the target language (i.e. Spanish or Swedish)

Do some editing if I believe i can do better that Deepl (which to be brutally honest would only be  applicable if the target language would be English or German)

That said, maybe it would be nice to have a workflow that goes roughly like this (and combines your two approaches):

• I write
• I choose the target language
• I can look at the translation and make edits (based on Deepl.com suggestions)
• I can choose to send, save draft or discard.
  • I have the ability to let someone form my team who's good at the target language have a look at the draft and make changes…)

Does that make sense?

Oh yes, makes total sense. So it is basically "emails should be translated too", but with the possibility to preview/edit the translations before sending.

To fully serve multilanguage workspaces we definitely do need some solution for emails too and this feels like a good approach. Do you want to submit this to our public roadmap (that way it shows it is your idea and you get notifications when we make decisions or move forward with the idea)?

I am happy for you to claim the idea and look forward to the solution!

Here it is: https://ecosystem.howspace.com/roadmap/email-translations - you can subscribe to that thread also to receive notifications.

Reporting back from the first multi-language live workshop with an observation:

The AI translation does a tremendous job and it was possible to host a workshop in a workspace with conten in German together for  a group of people who used various languages both in input and output.

Sometimes the AI does funny things: A frenchman has written a chat comment in English, but since his settings for his frontend was french, the "Like" and "Reply" had been translated into French "Aimé" on my frontend!

When I came back this morning to do a screenshot to post here, it was gone and all English (I had also in the meantime  changed the translation settings on my end between no translation and translation and back)

Nice to hear it was a success!

Sometimes the AI does funny things: A frenchman has written a chat comment in English, but since his settings for his frontend was french, the "Like" and "Reply" had been translated into French "Aimé" on my frontend!

Ah, so your frontend was English (or original language), but you still saw same French in your screen, regarding the comment made by someone using translator with French? I'll take a look if we know what is going on in this case.

Not a hundfred percent sure but I believe it was something like this:

• Workspace was set to German
• I was using "translate to English"
• I assume my participant was using translate to French
• I was at one point seeing his comment (which was written in English) in English
• I was seeing some elements i.e. "Like" or "Reply" in French

We can confirm there is indeed a bug that is related to the realtime updates for new comments. We start looking for the fix. Thanks for letting us know about this Daniel!

I figured it had to do with the cycles of interaction with the deepl servers, since I wasn't able to replicate it afterwards. Good luck with the debugging!

It happens only with the realtime updates - so you have to be on a same page at the same time when an user with a different translation setting adds a comment. This might be a difficult one, but we will fix it 👍

Worth fixing it - it's a typical situation in a live session, where everyone is on the same page!

This is now fixed! Thanks again for reporting it Daniel.

Great!