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Your event's languages are now chosen in the group: how Activate languages works

When you create or edit a group, you tick its languages and its default language, and that choice applies to the registration website, the fields, the email, the badge, the certificate, SMS and Mailing. What happens to your existing groups, what each guest sees when a translation is missing, and how the automatic translation coming soon will work.

Your event can run in eight languages: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan, Basque and Galician. Until now, each part of the dashboard chose them on its own: the registration website had its own language selector, and the editors always showed all eight tabs, whether you used them or not.

From now on, languages are chosen once, in the group, and that choice drives everything else. This article covers every option, what happens to the groups you already have, and what's coming with automatic translation.

At a glance

Activate languages: where and how

You'll find it in Create Group and Edit Group, in its own section, Activate languages:

The Activate languages section in Create Group, with English fixed as the default language and Spanish and French ticked
Create Group: English is the default language (its box can't be unticked), and Spanish and French have been activated too.

If you change the default language later, the existing column names and options move to the previous language's tab: none of them are lost.

What ticking a language changes

Whatever you tick in Activate languages applies to every section of the group that has translations:

The Website languages block in the website editor: Spanish, English, French and Italian, with the link to Edit group › Activate languages
In the website editor, languages are no longer chosen, only shown, with a link to Activate languages.

The badge email you send from the attendee list goes out in the language you use the dashboard in, if it's active in the group. If it isn't, it goes out in the group's default language, so nothing is ever sent in a language you haven't seen.

If you work with your team, languages are changed by whoever has the Edit group settings permission.

Deactivating a language doesn't delete anything

If you untick a language, its texts stay saved. What changes is what's shown:

Tick it again and everything comes back exactly as it was.

Before you save, Edit Group warns you where there are texts written in that language, and repeats the warning in the confirmation. It also tells you if that language is the base language of any document: it stays the base, with its tab marked "deactivated", until you choose another base in that document.

Edit Group with French unticked and the warning that it has texts written in Registration website and in Fields and options
French unticked: the dashboard warns that it has texts on the registration website and in the fields, and that they aren't deleted. The note at the bottom, about Translate the whole event, will appear once automatic translation arrives.
The Save Changes confirmation, repeating the warning before saving
When you save, the confirmation repeats the warning.

Anyone who already has that language saved keeps getting it. If a guest has French on their record (because they chose it in your website's language field, because it came in through the API, or because it's on a Mailing list), they keep receiving what's written in French or, if there's nothing, the base language. The exceptions are SMS and sending certificates, which only send what's written in the active tabs: that guest gets the same as someone with no language.

If your form has a language field that still offers a deactivated language, the website editor tells you; if you don't want it chosen, remove that option from the field in Edit Group.

Your existing groups: their languages are already activated

You don't need to do anything for things to stay as they are. Every group you already had has these activated automatically:

Your registration websites still offer the same languages as before. If a group has gained a language its website didn't offer (say you had texts in French but the website didn't offer French), the website still doesn't offer it: the website editor tells you, and if you want, the Offer them too button makes the website offer the missing ones.

The ticket sales website doesn't change either: it still offers its six languages.

Our suggestion: open Edit Group, look at Activate languages and untick the languages you don't use. You'll have fewer tabs in each editor and, once automatic translation arrives, it will only translate into what you actually need.

Eight languages, each with its own texts

Catalan, Basque and Galician, like Portuguese and Italian, have their own texts, which you write in their own tab:

And any of the eight can be the group's default language.

The base language: what a guest sees when a translation is missing

The website, the email, the badge and the certificate each have their own Base language. Its tab comes first, marked "base", and whatever you write in it is what's shown in the languages you leave untranslated.

Website editor: the Base language selector set to English and the tabs English (base), Spanish, French and Italian
The base language at the top, and below it only the tabs of the active languages, base first. The Generate and update translations button will arrive with automatic translation.

And which language does each guest see your website in? The one they pick at the top, from the ones you offer. When it opens, the website uses the first of these that it offers: theirs, if they arrive through their personal link and your form has a language field; the one they already chose before; or the group's default language. If it offers none of them, it opens in the first one you offer. Mailing and SMS write to them in their language, the one saved in that field. Anyone without one gets, in Mailing, the version in the campaign's Default language and, by SMS, the base-language text.

Coming soon: automatic translation

We're finishing an automatic translator built into the dashboard. It isn't available yet, and it doesn't have a date. Here's how it will work:

The Generate and update translations dialog with a Coming soon label: target languages, texts written by hand that aren't replaced, and the two options at 1 credit each
What the dialog will look like: which languages it translates into, the texts written by hand (not replaced unless you tick them), both options with their price, and your balance. We added the Coming soon label to the image.

As always

Activate languages is already in your account and your groups already have their languages activated: there's nothing to install or update. We'll tell you about automatic translation when it's ready.

If you're running an event in several languages and would like us to go through it with you, write to us.

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