Choose Your Target Languages

Before you start translating, you'll want to select which languages you want to support. This guide explains how to choose your target languages and what to consider.

Supported Languages

Translate Desk supports over 30 languages, including major world languages and regional variants. Supported languages include:

European languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, and more
Asian languages: Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), and more
Middle Eastern languages: Arabic, Turkish, and Hebrew
And many others

The system automatically selects the best translation approach for each language pair to ensure high-quality results.

Language Variants

Some languages have regional variants that are supported separately:

English: English (US) and English (UK)
Portuguese: Portuguese (Portugal) and Portuguese (Brazil)
Chinese: Chinese (Simplified) and Chinese (Traditional)

When selecting languages, choose the variant that matches your target audience. For example, if you're targeting customers in Brazil, select Portuguese (Brazil) rather than Portuguese (Portugal).

Selecting Target Languages

You can select your target languages at any time from your organization settings. Consider these factors when choosing:

Audience Location

Think about where your customers are located. If you have significant user bases in specific countries, prioritize those languages first.

Business Goals

Consider your business expansion plans. If you're planning to enter new markets, you might want to translate into those languages proactively.

Resource Planning

Start with your most important languages and expand over time. You can always add more languages later as your needs grow.

Language Selection Best Practices

Start Small

Begin with 2-3 languages that cover your largest customer segments. You can add more languages as you scale your translation workflow.

Prioritize by Impact

Focus on languages that will have the biggest impact on your support operations. Consider metrics like:

Number of customers in each language
Support ticket volume by language
Revenue by region

Consider Language Families

If you're targeting multiple languages in the same family (e.g., Spanish, Portuguese, Italian), you might find it easier to manage translations since the content structure is often similar.

Updating Your Language Selection

You can add or remove target languages at any time from your settings. When you add a new language:

All existing articles will show as "Needs Translation" for that language
You can start translating immediately
Language coverage metrics will update to include the new language

Removing a language doesn't delete existing translations, but it will stop showing that language in your translation options.

Language Coverage Goals

After selecting your target languages, you can set coverage goals to track progress. For example, you might aim for 100% coverage in your primary languages and 80% in secondary languages.

The dashboard shows your current coverage percentage for each language, making it easy to see where you need to focus your translation efforts. Learn more about How do I track language coverage?.

Next Steps

Once you've selected your target languages, you're ready to start translating. Learn how to import articles from Intercom and How do I translate an article?.