What It's Actually Like to Use Discourse in Another Language

This is what it looks like when you open https://meta.discourse.org (our public community for Discourse) in a browser set to Japanese.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://blog.discourse.org/2026/05/what-its-actually-like-to-use-discourse-in-another-language
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Hi Nat. the Japanese translated page looks so nice :star_struck:

question (that may already be answered somewhere) - I am curious if there are any way these can be translatable (without editing text strings):

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Events is still yet another plugin (calendar) that we’ve need to hook up to AI translations. Currently we don’t really have plugin-to-AI-plugin translations as far as I know, so we’ll need to figure this one out soon.

The “Home” looks interesting … seems like a theme string, maybe @derek can have a look :flexed_biceps:t2: :cat_with_wry_smile:

“Meta Branded” is also probably a “will not translate” since it’s pretty much the name of the theme component…

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Yep, this was a missing theme translation string. It should be fixed now!

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thanks!

(no i do not speak Russian lol)

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After translating my content into several languages earlier this year and consistently publishing localized content, my traffic—which was previously overwhelmingly from Brazil—has begun to fragment precisely among the countries where the supported languages were translated.

The first screenshot covers the last 7 days and remains consistent with the previous 28 days (April). Curiously, Portugal has never been at the top, even though Portuguese is spoken there; therefore, I assume that because other supported languages are being indexed by Google, my presence in Portuguese-speaking regions has also grown. I notice that South Africa and Angola have been showing very subtle growth in Google Search and Analytics.

I have been working with localized content since my time on Reddit. At first, it didn’t feel entirely natural, but very recently Twitter implemented its own translation feature—previously available only via the Google Translator API—which generated strong viral engagement between Russia and Brazil.

I appreciate the universality of languages and believe that, since this is still relatively new, there is still much room for improvement. However, I truly love that language barriers are falling, connecting us with other cultures and allowing us to learn from one another without losing our own identities. Twitter’s viral trends are a perfect example of this: exchanging information by writing and reading in our own language while engaging with another language and culture in a “natural” and understandable way.

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@eisammy this is amazing. I’m quite data-driven and am super thankful for you sharing your community statistics publicly.

The proof is in the pudding! (let’s see how the translator translates this idiom :laughing:)

Hopefully this encourages more communities to think about discovering where their language support gaps are. (if you’re a hosted customer, I’d be happy to support :discourse:)

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Very good haha, here’s mine: It’s in practice that you see (good luck translator)

I’ve been self-hosting for two years, but I’ll help however I can.

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