jrgong
January 8, 2026, 5:44pm
1
Hey guys
our use case: We are German forum, but we have EN-speaking advertising clients. Hence it would be great to be able to limit topic localizations to specific categories only.
4 Likes
jrgong
March 3, 2026, 3:49pm
2
Little bump here if there is maybe any workaround?
1 Like
nat
March 3, 2026, 3:51pm
3
Hmm I think this has been requested a few times across various places, let me have a look.
2 Likes
nat
March 31, 2026, 9:48am
5
Adding this here for now:
main ← ai-translation-category-pm
merged 02:53PM - 31 Mar 26 UTC
Related: https://meta.discourse.org/t/feature-request-limit-topic-translation-to… -specific-categories/392993
The old `ai_translation_backfill_limit_to_public_content` setting was too coarse. It either translated everything or only public content, with no way to pick specific categories or control PM translation separately.
This replaces it with two settings:
- `ai_translation_target_categories` (category_list): pick exactly which categories get translated. Subcategories need to be added separately. Empty means no category topics get translated.
- `ai_translation_private_messages` (enum: none / group / all): controls PM translation independently. none disables it, group limits to group PMs, all includes ... all.
Tags are switched to "always translated".
The migration reads the old setting and maps it to the new settings, so existing sites keep their current behaviour. It also cleans up the old setting.
<img width="359" height="511" alt="Screenshot 2026-03-31 at 5 33 45 PM" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/48ed19e8-f559-447c-a7af-c235698d62df" />
Give us a day or two to merge this.
4 Likes
pmusaraj
May 27, 2026, 6:09pm
7
A follow-up on this feature. We made a technical change recently
committed 06:51PM - 26 May 26 UTC
This PR changes Discourse AI translations from an opt-in category model
to an op… t-out model: instead of translating only selected
`ai_translation_target_categories`, it introduces
`ai_translation_excluded_categories`, updates the admin UI copy and save
flow, changes topic/post/category candidate selection and detection jobs
to translate all non-excluded categories by default, and adds a
migration that converts existing target-category settings into the
equivalent excluded-category list for existing sites.
It also updates all related specs.
---------
Co-authored-by: discourse-patch-triage[bot] <272280883+discourse-patch-triage[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
Following that change, the ability to limit topic translation to specific categories is still present. But unlike the initial implementation, now Discourse defaults to translating all content and an ai_translation_excluded_categories site setting is available to do just that, exclude categories from translation.
Existing communities should have been migrated automatically to this system. Let us know if you run into any issues.
2 Likes