Enable a language

Adding a language is a three-step flow: create it in Pending status, let the translation jobs catch up, then flip it to Active so customers can see it.

1. Open the Languages tab

Go to Settings → Knowledge and click the Markets and Languages tab. You’ll see the list of languages already configured, plus their status (Active, Pending, Disabled) and the language used as the default.

2. Click Add language

Pick a language code from the picker. Atender supports the standard BCP 47 codes:

• en — English
• es — Spanish
• fr — French
• de — German
• nl — Dutch
• it — Italian
• pt — Portuguese
• pt-BR — Portuguese (Brazil)
• sv — Swedish
• no — Norwegian
• da — Danish
• fi — Finnish
• ja — Japanese
• zh — Chinese (Simplified)

Regional variants (en-GB, pt-BR) are supported when you need them. Use the base code (en, pt) when one variant is enough.

3. Save with status = Pending

The new language starts in Pending. Atender immediately queues translation jobs:

• Every published article in the default language is queued for translation.
• Every category, subcategory, and section name is queued.
• The UI strings (search box, “Was this helpful?”, category page labels) are translated.

Translation runs in the background. Depending on how much content you have, it can finish in a few minutes (small KB, ~50 articles) or take longer (large KB, hundreds of articles).

4. Watch translation progress

In the Languages tab, click into the new language. You’ll see a progress indicator:

• Articles translated — count of articles with a complete translation in this language.
• Articles pending — still in the queue.
• Articles failed — the job hit an error. Most failures are transient and will retry; persistent failures need an admin to look at them.

The progress refreshes as jobs finish. There’s no estimated time — it depends on queue depth and the article count.

5. Spot-check a few translations

Before flipping to Active, open a few translated articles and read them. Click into the article in the editor, switch the language preview to your new language, and check:

• Does the title sound natural?
• Does the summary read well?
• Are protected terms (your brand name, product name) preserved untranslated?
• Are there any awkward phrasings that need a manual override?

If you find issues, fix them as protected terms — that’s faster than editing every article. For one-off fixes, edit the translation directly.

6. Flip to Active

When you’re satisfied, change the language status from Pending to Active. The language goes live on the public help center within seconds. Customers whose browser prefers this language will start seeing the translated content.

Order of articles in the queue

Translation jobs run in roughly publish-date order — recently published articles translate first. If you have articles you specifically need translated before others, edit them after enabling the language; edits push them back to the front of the queue.

What happens after Active

• Edits trigger re-translation. When you publish an edit to the default-language article, the translations queue automatically.
• New articles translate too. Every article you publish in the default language queues a translation job for every active language.
• Disabled languages keep their translations. If you switch a language to Disabled, you don’t lose the translations — flipping it back to Active makes them visible again.

Removing a language

Open the language and click Remove. The translations are deleted; if you re-enable the language later, every article will need to be re-translated from scratch.

If you’re not sure, set the language to Disabled instead. Disabled keeps the translations but stops serving them.

Common gotchas

• The default language can’t be removed. Change the default first if you really need to remove your default language. Changing the default is a heavier operation — every translation re-runs.
• Translation isn’t instantaneous. New articles take a minute or two to appear in non-default languages. If a customer hits an article right after publish, they’ll see the default-language fallback until the translation job finishes.
• Protected terms apply globally. If you mark “Atender” as a protected term, it stays “Atender” in every language. See Manage protected terms.