I know we have a translation plugin but I suspect that top companies translates texts by default with no intervention because a very good reason: only a few clicks the buttons.
It’s possible to implement translation into a few languages on-the-go? Airbnb is very good example what I’m looking for.
In their app people write in their own language and APIs translates by default (showing an icon to read on the original language written).
That could be a major break in Discourse adoption and, of course, growing our communities
It don’t works with DeepL so it’s useless for our instance but we like and are looking for the automatic approach instead.
Pressing a button and loading more buttons on every single post isn’t a very good idea from UI/UX perspective (we have flag, like, share, bookmark over there).
This is certainly a feature we are very interested in building. We are considering merging translation into Discourse AI because LLMs tend to be both cheaper and more flexible at this kind of job.
I agree that this kind of feature is very important, especially when it is coupled with language detection.
The downside is cost; you need to pass all text on the forum via an “is it English” check, but I can think of quite a few shortcuts here.
Hi Sam,
great that you’re interested in that feature. Any update on this from Discourse side?
We’re trying to find a suitable solution for our Discourse instance, but haven’t found any go-to one yet. In our case it’s essential for our forum’s future, and I’d imagine quite many other communities would appreciate it as well
Okay thanks @sam for the quick reply! I understand that this kind of bigger fundamental feature can take time. If you need beta users or sparring help, let me know
Just checking, any update on this @sam? We’re planning to test this ourselves at some point in spring, so any rough indication or guess could save time:)
How would it work? In what language would it store the text? How would search work? In AirBnB it is easy because we only have 2 languages for each conversation – the booker and the owner. So it can save the conversation in both languages and show the right one to each person. But e.g. Meta would have to be translated to any given language in order to appear localized to everyone? I also cannot imagine it would translate each topic on the fly as this could be expensive on high traffic sites.
We’re actively working on this. I don’t have an ETA for you, but I can say we are making good progress, our initial target is to have the topic page be translatable in full via a single global language toggle.
Search is very much a V2 or V3 feature (many months later, unsure), since our current search is only suitable for the post raw content and not multilingual.
