# Localize category topic templates

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/localize-category-topic-templates/412279
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** content-localization
**Created:** [September 12, 2026, 1:56pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/localize-category-topic-templates/412279 "2026-09-12T13:56:49Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 1

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### Author: ![SilentNewt95](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@SilentNewt95](https://meta.discourse.org/u/SilentNewt95)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2026, 1:56pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/localize-category-topic-templates/412279/1 "2026-09-12T13:56:50Z")

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### Problem

Discourse’s Content Localization (manual and automatic via Discourse AI) does a great job localizing topic titles, posts, category names and category descriptions. However, category **topic templates** (`categories.topic_template`) cannot be localized. In multilingual communities, the composer prefill always appears in the site’s default language — for everyone.

### Current behavior

- `CategoryLocalization` stores `name` and `description` per locale (the `Localizable` concern provides “multi-locale name/description support” for Topic/Post/Category).
- The composer always uses the unlocalized `topic_template`, regardless of the member’s interface locale.

### Proposed solution

- Add `topic_template` to `CategoryLocalization` (including the admin localization editor UI).
- When a member opens the composer in a category, use the template matching their interface locale, with a fallback to the category’s default template if no localization exists.
- The same gap applies to the newer per-category **form templates** : they can differ _between_ categories, but there is no locale-aware variant _within_ one category — multilingual setups would have to split their community into separate per-language categories to work around it.

### **Use case**

We run a bilingual community (German default, English via automatic AI translation). Some categories provide structured composer templates with checklist items and an `[event]` block for the built-in date picker. English-speaking members currently get a German-only template. Our workaround is a single bilingual template (each label duplicated as “German / English” on one line), which works, but it is clunky for both editors and members and doubles the composer content.

Related

- #32464 (localized categories route) — same localization surface, categories.

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/localize-category-topic-templates/412279)._