Localisation de contenu - Manuel et automatique avec Discourse AI

[nat (Natalie T)]

In this topic, we will walk you through the Content Localization features and how to enable them. The features are split into two parts: What is available by default in Discourse; and Discourse AI for automatic translations. For quick access to the relevant sections, use the wiki headings

Hosted by Discourse?

This feature is available to you! Read on to learn more about how to configure this for your community.

Localizing Your Community’s Content

An updated version of Discourse (3.5.0.beta7-dev) gives you access to several localization features available for configuration at:

• <your-site-url>/admin/site_settings/category/content_localization

New Content Localization in Site Settings 📸

Getting information on your users

Firstly, it is good to get some information on your community. The following data explorer query can give you an idea of how many users may have set their locale in /my/preferences/interface

SELECT locale, count(*) as count
FROM users
WHERE (locale IS NOT null AND locale <> '')
GROUP BY locale
ORDER BY count DESC

Sample results from Data Explorer

Setting locales that your community supports

With the information above, we are now more informed about which locales your community should support.

In <your-site-url>/admin/site_settings/category/content_localization, you can select locales to support.

• Content localization enabled - turns on the feature that replaces original written user content with localized content. Read on for auto and manual modes of localizing.
• Content localization supported locales - the list of languages your site supports
• Content localization anon language switcher - covered just below

List of locales in Site Settings 📸

Enabling the subsequent setting Content localization anon language switcher also allows you to make your community more accessible to non-logged-in users by showing the list of languages you’ve chosen in the list of supported locales:

Language switcher at the top right of the page

Viewing localized content

Localized welcome topic on meta.discourse.org

For viewers of localized content (all site visitors), they may cursor over the indicator next to the post’s date to view the original language of the post. This indicator only shows up if the post is not in their language.

If a user wishes to only see original content, they may use the toggle above the topic timeline to disable localizations for the whole site.

Automatic translations with Discourse AI

Discourse AI are the vitamins essential for the localization feature, and takes away the need to do manual translations.

As an admin, you’d want to head to our new AI features section for Translation.

Discourse AI Features in Admin Settings 📸

Scroll down in /admin/plugins/discourse-ai/ai-features

To cover some important settings and recommendations:

• AI translation model - We highly recommend setting a quota to the LLM you choose for the translation model.
• AI translation backfill hourly rate - this setting is hidden in the UI and defaults to 0. Automatic translation will not begin if this value is 0. Assuming the rate is 50, your site will translate 50 posts, 50 topics, and 50 categories per hour, to the locales you have set in Content localization supported locales. Keep this to a low number when starting out.
• AI translation backfill max age days - defaults to 5. This means topics and posts older than 5 days will not be translated. You may increase this to a large number to translate all topics and posts.
• AI translation backfill limit to public content - defaults to true. This prevents PMs and content in private categories from being sent to the LLM. When set to false, group PMs, and private categories will be included in translations. PMs between individuals will not be translated.
• AI translation max post length - defaults to 10000. This is a safeguard and prevents posts above a certain length from being translated.
• AI translation post raw translator persona (and other personas) - In more formal communities, admins may choose to create their own persona. This allows you to set a prompt that is more fine-tuned to the language or vocabulary you prefer.

You can refer to AI bot - Personas on how to configure suitable personas and fine-tune prompts for each function.

Manual localization

As localization is a core feature in Discourse, we provide the ability for you to fill in and edit localizations manually in the event automatic translations with Discourse AI is not available.

By default, admins and moderators are set up to edit localizations.

Localization allowed groups in Site Settings 📸

Admin Site Setting for Content Localization

Currently, we have post content, topic title, and category name and category description localizations. Tags are not supported yet, but will be in the near future. Subsequent sections below will show you how they work.

Category localization

Localized categories are visible in the following areas, with both category name and description localized:

Places where categories are localized 📸

1. Homepage, sidebar, and category dropdown

2. Categories page

3. A specific category with subcategories

As an admin, you should be able to access category settings as usual, and find the new “Localizations” nav item on the left.

Editing category localizations in Category Settings 📸

Topic and Post localization

From the screenshots above in Category localization, you may have noticed topic titles and excerpts being localized.

There are some pre-requisite settings

• Ensure your user is in content localization allowed groups
• Add addTranslation in site setting for post menu. This allows the to show up in the post menu for users in content localization allowed groups

2 Site Settings 📸

Once again, the list of localizable languages is in the Content localization supported locales setting mentioned above.

Editing a localized post

In the event the user might be viewing a localized post, and wants to edit the post, a dialog will appear to ask which version they would prefer to edit:

The appropriate composer will appear after deciding.

Deleting a post’s translation for a certain locale

If you’ve followed instructions above regarding the post menu setting correctly, you should be able to do the following if you’re in the content_localization_allowed_groups:

FAQ

I’ve set things up, but automatic translation is still not working for me
Confirm if you’ve these set up

• Content localization supported locales has at least one language
• Content localization enabled is
• Ai translation enabled is
• Ai translation model is set to a model that is working (you can Run test on the LLM)
• Ai translation max age days is not 0
• ai_translation_backfill_hourly_rate is more than 12. This is a hidden site setting which requires console access.

If all else fails, you can enable SiteSetting.ai_translation_verbose_logs.

Is every post getting translated?
If AI translation backfill limit to public content is , all posts in public categories except for Bot (user id < 0) posts will be translated.

Are the automatic translations saved, or is it being sent to the LLM each time someone views a topic?
The translations are saved, each post is only sent once per language and the translations are reused.

---

Hosted by Discourse?

The number of supported locales is limited by your plan:

• Starter: 2
• Pro: 3
• Business: 5
• Enterprise: 10

The backfill limit per hour is currently 100 for all.

[putty (Derek Putnam)]

@nat

Category localization

As an admin, you should be able to access category settings as usual, and find the new “Localizations” nav item on the left.

Are there any recommendations for doing this in bulk for existing categories? Worst case, perhaps via API?

[nat (Natalie T)]

Hmm great question. I’ll see to it that API docs get updated for the category update endpoint.

[tvavrda (Tomas Vavrda)]

Will there be a support for per-language moderator (translator)? I am thinking about meta – where I might be volunteering for checking the posts in a specific language and manually update them. Especially documentation which may welcome some human touches. But you say only moderators can do it which I probably never be.

[nat (Natalie T)]

Hmm good suggestion. I think that can be done but we’ll need to think about the details on how it can be set up.

We currently have the following, but let me check if it can be extended to a group called “localization moderators”.

[Ivan_Rapekas]

@nat

ai_translation_backfill_hourly_rate is more than 12. This is a hidden site setting which requires console access.

How to access it? Could you provide a command please?

Does Sidekiq have any job linked? Is it possible to trigger it manually?

[Moin]

@Ivan_Rapekas

How to access it?

Using Hidden Site Settings

This is a how-to guide about Hidden Site Settings, how to enable them, and why you might want to adjust them. Required user level: Administrator Important: Console access is required for some steps. In Discourse, hidden site settings refer to configuration options that are not readily visible or accessible through the standard admin dashboard interface. These settings are part of the backend configuration that can control various advanced or potent…

[nat (Natalie T)]

@Ivan_Rapekas

@nat

ai_translation_backfill_hourly_rate is more than 12. This is a hidden site setting which requires console access.

How to access it? Could you provide a command please?

To add on to Moin’s post above, it’s just SiteSetting. ai_translation_backfill_hourly_rate once you get to the console. The job runs every five minutes and rate limit accordingly.

[putty (Derek Putnam)]

I see localization is now available in the docs. Thanks @nat!

[satonotdead]

That’s wonderful, kudos to the team! I’m testing it right now and I will share my thoughts and overall experience.

*Moving from Discourse Translator plugin we miss Esperanto.

Can this 'simply‘ be added, or does it need to be built into discourse-languages first?*

[nat (Natalie T)]

@putty

localization is now available in the docs

Wow you’re on the ball – I was just about to report here.

@satonotdead

Moving from Discourse Translator plugin we miss Esperanto

… built into discourse-languages first?

Yes, kind of. We want a full localized experience where the controls (buttons, labels, etc) are translated properly and sufficiently (70% would be really good) via Crowdin (see Translations - Discourse Meta), and with that we can provide support to the language.

[tvavrda (Tomas Vavrda)]

Does the content localization work with Documentation Categories? It seems to me that sidebar content is not getting translated even though I localize the index topic.

Also I noticed a strange behavior. When I see a localized topic in the original language and I refresh, it switches to the localized version. I have to switch again to the original version manually.

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

Oh fantastic catch, yeah it is not working yet, but something @nat will track!

I wonder if this is a catalyst to coming up with a better abstraction / data model for the sidebar doc links.

[nat (Natalie T)]

@tvavrda

sidebar content is not getting translated

Yes that’s right – there are many places in Discourse that will need explicit translation, so I’m logging them as and when. Most recently, we localized notifications for topic titles as well. This is an example of a feature topic I created - Show translated user bios.

I’ll create a new topic and @ you so we make sure we cover all the bases in sidebar.

EDIT: @tvavrda covered here - Translate sidebar documentation links. Please have a look and see if it makes sense.

@tvavrda

Also I noticed a strange behavior. When I see a localized topic in the original language and I refresh, it switches to the localized version. I have to switch again to the original version manually.

What do you mean by “switch again”?

Do you mind sharing a video recording (include the address bar) next time it happens? Feel free to DM me for this case if the content is not suitable in public. Also, were you logged in? Technically speaking these things are tracked by cookies so it’s a bit puzzling for me.

[tvavrda (Tomas Vavrda)]

Sent you a video.

Another observation – I cannot see diffs of the translated content, right? That might be useful if there are updates to it. Not super important but it would make sense, I guess.

And another – the backlinks under the topic don’t show a localized topic name.

And a question: What’s the point of localizing category descriptions in the category settings? The category description should come from the localized version of the “About” topic, shouldn’t it? The localized version does not support markdown, so I cannot use a link, which I would like to.

Other than that it works beautifully!

[tvavrda (Tomas Vavrda)]

Well… the old GitHub - discourse/discourse-docs-sidebar component actually respects the localization I temporarily switched to that one.

[nat (Natalie T)]

@tvavrda

I cannot see diffs of the translated content

Yeah, this is currently not supported as well and would be quite an endeavour.

We have a little special-coloured indicator (similar to post edits indicator next to it) when a translation may be outdated as the post version has changed.

[tvavrda (Tomas Vavrda)]

I also see an untranslated content on pinned topic’s abstracts. So I see a topic list in the translated language but the abstract of the pined topic shows original.