Disable or remove a language

Two different operations, two different effects. Disabling a language hides it from customers but keeps every translation in the database. Removing a language deletes its translations entirely. Reach for disable first; only remove when you’re sure you won’t need the language again.

Before you start

• A user role that can edit Knowledge Base settings.
• Know which language you want to take offline and whether you might re-enable it later.

Disable — pause the language

1. Open Settings → Knowledge → Markets and Languages → Languages.
2. Find the language in the Secondary Languages list.
3. Toggle the Active switch off. The language flips to Disabled immediately.
4. Customers in this language now fall back to the primary language. Their existing translations stay in the database, untouched.

Re-enabling is the same flip in reverse. Translations resume serving the moment the switch goes back on.

Remove — delete the language

1. Open Settings → Knowledge → Markets and Languages → Languages.
2. Find the language in the Secondary Languages list.
3. Click the trash icon at the end of the row.
4. The language is deleted. Every translation Atender has produced for this language is deleted with it.

There’s no confirmation dialog — the click goes through. If you removed the wrong language, you’ll need to re-add it and re-run translations from scratch.

Why disable beats remove (most of the time)

Translations cost AI inference. A language with 500 translated articles represents a meaningful amount of compute. Deleting and re-adding the same language re-runs every translation job — slow, expensive, and unnecessary if you only needed to pause.

Use disable when:

• You’re piloting a language and not ready to expose it publicly yet.
• A market you serve is temporarily on hold and customers there shouldn’t see localized content.
• You spotted a translation quality issue you want time to clean up before customers see it.

Use remove when:

• You enabled the wrong language by mistake.
• The language is permanently out of scope and you want the translation rows cleaned out.

The primary language is different

The primary language is your default — articles are authored in it, translations translate from it. You can’t disable it (everything would fall back to nothing), and you can’t delete it without first promoting another language to primary.

To switch the primary language:

1. Find the language you want to make primary in the Secondary Languages list.
2. Click the Languages icon (the alternative-letters glyph) on its row.
3. Confirm in the Change Primary Language dialog. Existing translations stay attached to their languages; future articles default to the new primary.

Promoting a new primary is a heavier operation than it looks — keep it for genuine business changes (your company language shifted, your primary market changed), not for casual experimentation.

What customers see right after a change

• Disable a language: customers in that language fall back to the primary on their next page load. No errors, no missing pages.
• Remove a language: same fallback behavior, but the translations are gone — if you re-add the language tomorrow, every article re-translates from scratch.
• Promote a new primary: existing translations remain; new articles author in the new primary going forward.

Common gotchas

• The trash icon has no confirmation. Click carefully. There’s no undo.
• Disable preserves translations; remove deletes them. Get this distinction right before clicking.
• The translation sync card stays visible even when a language is disabled — coverage stats still show, the language just isn’t served to customers.