# Posting in a disabled language
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/posting-in-a-disabled-language/412608
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** content-localization
**Created:** [September 16, 2026, 6:06pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posting-in-a-disabled-language/412608 "2026-09-16T18:06:53Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@mbauman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mbauman)
#### Post date: [September 16, 2026, 6:06pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posting-in-a-disabled-language/412608/1 "2026-09-16T18:06:53Z")
I would love to be able to support posting in non-enabled languages. There are effectively five levels of language support now:
- Browser-based (and other ad-hoc) translation to arbitrary locales
- Discourse’s supported locales (some few dozen)
- Discourse AI’s supported auto-translatable locales (some few dozen)
- The _site’s_ enabled locales (here 11)
- The _site’s_ enabled AI-translated locales (here 11, often even more limited due to plan and/or cost)
Just as Discourse wants to ensure it has good coverage of the l10n efforts before adding a supported locale, individual sites will want to ensure their, e.g., guidelines and other prominent/important content are appropriately translated and supported. For example, we’ve used `site_texts` to change the _meaning_ of some important facets of our site. We would need to ensure we have the right translations of those before enabling more locales.
But there’s a long tail of languages used! I would very much appreciate the ability for someone in the long-tail of languages to post in their native language, even if we’ve not vetted all our site\_texts and guidelines and other translations. Often these folks can read English well enough to get by (especially with the help of some ad-hoc translation)… but posting is another story.
I think it’d make a lot of sense to have far more supported languages in post **authorship**. Why not allow me to post in any of the **supported** auto-translatable locales? Sure, I don’t get first-class auto-translation _back_ to my native language, but surely there’s a huge boon to allow me to author like this?
Edit: Actually, I suppose my ask is slightly different from the OP’s — I simply want to support _posting_ in any one of Discourse AI’s supported auto-translatable locales without adding them as a **site-enabled locale** , whereas the OP’s ask was about adding **yet more** languages to the supported class.
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### Author:  [@mbauman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mbauman)
#### Post date: [September 16, 2026, 6:56pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posting-in-a-disabled-language/412608/2 "2026-09-16T18:56:41Z")
Can I post in a language that isn’t enabled, using the dropdown menu to select “Not Set”… and then manually add an English translation? Or does “Not Set” simply imply the website’s default language?
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### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [September 16, 2026, 7:24pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posting-in-a-disabled-language/412608/3 "2026-09-16T19:24:15Z")
You could create a free forum and use that for testing instead of using this forum for testing.
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### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [September 16, 2026, 7:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posting-in-a-disabled-language/412608/4 "2026-09-16T19:29:18Z")
> [@mbauman](#):
>
> simply want to support _posting_ in any one of Discourse AI’s supported auto-translatable locales without adding them as a **site-enabled locale**
This is already possible and mentioned in the documentation
> [@Content Localization - Manual and Automatic with Discourse AI](https://meta.discourse.org/t/content-localization-manual-and-automatic-with-discourse-ai/370969/1):
>
> **If my forum supports English and Japanese (via `Content localization supported locales`), and someone writes in Spanish, will their post be translated?**
> Yes. All topics and posts will be translated to English and Japanese, regardless of the written language.
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### Author:  [@mbauman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mbauman)
#### Post date: [September 16, 2026, 7:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posting-in-a-disabled-language/412608/5 "2026-09-16T19:35:22Z")
Thanks; I did search and even found/skimmed that topic but missed that FAQ. This topic seemed to be the closest match to what I wanted, but obviously I missed.
The part that made this confusing to me is that I cannot select Esperanto manually while authoring the post… but the Locale Detector Agent auto-detected it and marked the above post as `eo`!
So… this becomes a very minimal ask: could we be able to manually declare _many more languages_ directly during post authorship? That’d make it more obvious that using those languages is ok! In fact, there are surely languages that the translation LLM doesn’t support; how do I know which those are?
It looks like the locale dropdown during post authorship only shows the _enabled_ languages, whereas the post dropdown in the translations modal (afterwards) shows the _supported_ locales… but the translator LLM supports even more than that!
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### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [September 16, 2026, 7:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posting-in-a-disabled-language/412608/6 "2026-09-16T19:46:22Z")
> [@mbauman](#):
>
> In fact, there are surely languages that the translation LLM doesn’t support; how do I know which those are?
I think those depend on the LLM you choose, not on the Discourse feature you are using.
A locale dropdown that offers any language with thousands of entries wouldn’t make it easier to select the language. Even showing all ~50 languages the Discourse interface currently supports are a lot and would still exclude all the other languages.
Maybe it could work for you to hide the dropdown if you think it’s discouraging. Then users won’t see those languages in the composer. Though I feel I tent to reply in a language I see in the forum, so I am not sure the dropdown would be what would stop me to just post in German.
But I agree that a manual input of the language code would be a nice feature. Maybe not for end users, but for staff. If AI is allowed to do that when detecting the language it should also be possible on forums not using AI
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### Author:  [@mbauman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mbauman)
#### Post date: [September 16, 2026, 7:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posting-in-a-disabled-language/412608/7 "2026-09-16T19:53:33Z")
I’m quite the atypical user here as I’m evaluating and trying to understand how translations behave under a variety of admin configurations… and which configurations will make the most sense for our particular community. But I think it’s highly nonintuitive (and rather assumptive!) for a user to blithely post in Spanish if they stumble across a site that only shows English and Japanese languages in the drop-downs (both site-wide and in post authorship)!
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### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [September 16, 2026, 8:33pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posting-in-a-disabled-language/412608/8 "2026-09-16T20:33:18Z")
As I said, I think I am much more influenced by the language I see in the forum than the one shown in a dropdown. Your Japanese user would see all posts in Japanese if they didn’t add English to the languages they understand. So it might feel natural for them to reply in that language. But if you see an forum with English posts only, you tend to post in that language too as long as it’s not a to big hurdle.
If you saw a German forum with almost all post in German would you just post in French just because there was a dropdown to choose French as the interface language for the forum?
You can enable the `Content localization language switcher` only for anonymous users and let everyone who signs up select their preferred language in their preferences where all languages the Discourse interface supports are offered.
But you would still see the other users post in a different language.
And I think this is what makes me write this in English. I want you to understand me as well as possible. So if everyone writes in English, I try to do that too. Translations always result in information loss.
An example from Meta:
This is what the English post says:
> [@API scope \`all-users\` not working anymore](https://meta.discourse.org/t/api-scope-all-users-not-working-anymore/399597/1):
>
> However, sometime in the last month it stopped working and only gives 400s.
This is what the German translation says:
> [@API scope \`all-users\` not working anymore](https://meta.discourse.org/t/api-scope-all-users-not-working-anymore/399597/1):
>
> Allerdings hat das Skript in den letzten Monaten nicht mehr funktioniert und liefert nur noch 400er-Fehler.
> However, the script hasn’t been working for the past few months and now only returns 400 errors.
If I wanted to find out what has changed the nuance between “stopped working in the last month” and “hasn’t been working for the past months” is quite important.
That’s why I usually try to stick to a language we both understand. There is less risk for misunderstandings and if there are any I at least know why. If I don’t know the translation you are looking at that is much more difficult.
So I use the language other users in this forum use - not because of a dropdown somewhere but because I want them to understand me.
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### Author:  [@mbauman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mbauman)
#### Post date: [September 16, 2026, 9:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posting-in-a-disabled-language/412608/9 "2026-09-16T21:16:56Z")
My core goal is to understand how the discourse site I administer — a decade old, English-only site — could start enabling automated translation.
We’re going to trial this by enabling post translations to English, _but still supporting English alone!_ With such a configuration, there’s absolutely nothing that would indicate you can do this — in fact the multilingual menu in the post editor really makes it seem like only English works:
This setup really only works thanks to the Locale Detector agent.
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### Author:  [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [September 16, 2026, 10:06pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posting-in-a-disabled-language/412608/10 "2026-09-16T22:06:05Z")
> [@mbauman](#):
>
> in fact the multilingual menu in the post editor really makes it seem like only English works:
Right we could hide this composer menu if there’s only a single language… I don’t think we really considered “post in Y and we’ll translate to X, but we won’t translate everything else back to Y”… I believe we always had at least 2 supported languages in mind.
The locale detector agent will detect any language and set it, regardless of what the site supports in settings. Language support and detection quality will vary by LLM.
Posting as “not set” in a language unsupported by Discourse and setting an English translation by hand won’t work without AI at the moment. Manual translation requires a supported locale so the original post can be set.
Allowing admins to set additional languages for use in the composer menu might be a reasonable option to have for this case.
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### Author:  [@mbauman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mbauman)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2026, 1:42pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posting-in-a-disabled-language/412608/11 "2026-09-17T13:42:02Z")
Yeah, but even if we enable more than one language we translate to, I’m anticipating that folks will want to post in one of the non-translated languages. As a technical engineering community, we have a large swath of folks who are used to English docs & communication, but have difficulties _writing_ in English — and the languages here are in a _very long tail!_
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### Author:  [@nat](https://meta.discourse.org/u/nat)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2026, 1:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posting-in-a-disabled-language/412608/12 "2026-09-17T13:49:00Z")
> [@mbauman](#):
>
> folks will want to post in one of the non-translated languages
> [@Content Localization - Manual and Automatic with Discourse AI](https://meta.discourse.org/t/content-localization-manual-and-automatic-with-discourse-ai/370969/1):
>
> This is already possible and mentioned in the documentation
>
> > [@Content Localization - Manual and Automatic with Discourse AI](https://meta.discourse.org/t/content-localization-manual-and-automatic-with-discourse-ai/370969/1):
> >
> > **If my forum supports English and Japanese (via `Content localization supported locales`), and someone writes in Spanish, will their post be translated?**
> > Yes. All topics and posts will be translated to English and Japanese, regardless of the written language.
I might be missing part of the concern here. As @Moin mentioned above, people can already post in languages outside the site’s supported list. With automatic translation enabled, language detection and translation happen without the author needing to select a language, so people can just write in the language they’re comfortable with.
Is the concern that the composer’s language menu makes this seem unsupported?
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### Author:  [@mbauman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mbauman)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2026, 2:15pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posting-in-a-disabled-language/412608/13 "2026-09-17T14:15:45Z")
> [@nat](#):
>
> Is the concern that the composer’s language menu makes this seem unsupported?
Yes, precisely. And it’s possible for the detector agent to misfire in surprising ways — but we’re completely dependent upon it to start the sequence. You can see our community testing this setup here:
> **[Should we enable automatic natural language translation here?](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/should-we-enable-automatic-natural-language-translation-here/139273/32?u=mbauman)**
>
> In topics with multilingual/translated posts (like mine above), you’ll now see a button at the top of the topic right-hand sidebar. This will allow you to configure your language preferences: If you add Spanish to a language you understand...
Despite me _already telling them_ that they can just write in any language, two people immediately responded saying it seems like they can’t.
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### Author:  [@mbauman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mbauman)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2026, 3:37pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/posting-in-a-disabled-language/412608/14 "2026-09-17T15:37:10Z")
> [@mbauman](#):
>
> we have a large swath of folks who are used to English docs & communication, but have difficulties _writing_ in English — and the languages here are in a _very long tail!_
The folks trying the translation in that topic are a great example. We immediately had Portuguese, Dutch and Norwegian tests… but those are the 10th, 11th and ~40th languages by browser user agent locale in our page view counts.