Translating and localizing your Tahoe Pro site

Note: this feature is only available to Appsembler customers on a Tahoe Professional plan or higher. Speak with your Customer Success Manager for help and details!

Multilingual learners expect multilingual sites. They want a website that responds to their browser's preferred language and presents them content in the language they favor, even if some of the content is still in English. But how do you meet those expectations? Tahoe's multi-language internationalization functionality can help! Let's look into how it works and how to enable multiple languages on your site.

First, you need to pick which languages to enable on your site. In this case, we're going to enable Canadian French as our option. To do this, we first navigate to Site Languages tab in the General Settings area of your management console.

Once you're on this page, scroll down to find the languages available. We're planning on expanding this list as and when we verify the quality of translation work that has been done in each language. If the language you need isn't available, get in touch to let us know what to look into next! 

Simply select the language you want to enable and click  Save. If you want your site to appear in a different language by default, enable the language you want to use and then change the Default language dropdown to your chosen language.

Once this is enabled, learners will see this language if their browser is set to look for it when they visit your site. But you're not done yet! Your site has a home page, and other supporting pages which we can't translate for you. You'll have to translate these yourself, and please don't use Google Translate. Your organization will look silly to native speakers, and things like your privacy policy and terms of service may cease to be legally enforceable if you translate them poorly. Use a real translator who understands idioms and tone.

To translate your individual site pages, first access the Page Editor the normal way via your management console. Then click Edit Page on the page you want to translate. 

Once you're in the page, select the language you want to edit in the top right.

Any changes you make to your site pages with this language selected will only apply to learners who are using your site in that language. This means you can not only translate your site to make it easier for them to use, you can also deliver an entirely different localized experience based on the learner's preferred language.

It is important to note that your courses will not be translated when you enable these options. You'll need to handle those separately. Fortunately we've got an article on doing just that, titled Creating multilingual Open edX courses.