Knowledge Translations

OK, so setting up and maintaining Knowledge is a big job. Adding alternate languages to it makes it even more complex. Now try combining that with a few brands on a few different public sites and it's quite a handful. 

Some notes on translations. 

As per regular knowledge, permissions are key. If things go wrong, it is usually in permissions. 

Settings

• Set up Language settings in Knowledge Settings
• The Default Assignee - how do users get in there?
  • They have to have a Knowledge feature licence

Permissions

https://help.salesforce.com/HTViewHelpDoc?id=knowledge_setup_users.htm&language=en_US (this is a helpful article). 

• Article Actions are important - ensure the user has all the translation article actions (and you can create your own Article Actions in Approval Processes). 

Publishing

https://help.salesforce.com/HTViewHelpDoc?id=knowledge_article_publish.htm&language=en_US

Translations have a different life-cycle to the actual article. 

• Create the Article
• Submit for Translation
  • Choose a person to assign the translation to
• Now go back to Article Management
  • Choose the Draft Translations list
  • The the translation will be there to edit.
  • Edit the translation.
• (Translation is approved optionally). 
• Publish the translation
  • All that does is sends it ready for publication - it is NOT LIVE yet. 
• Now go back to the article. 
• Publish the article. 
  • Hover over the translation status flag icon to see the translations that are waiting to be published. 
  • All Translations marked as ready for Publication will be published. 

Finding Translations

This is weird, the translation management is in a different tab to the article management. I guess it makes sense to someone. 

• In the Article Management Tab - choose the Translations tab (a mini tab, not to be confused with the difference between the Knowledge Tab and the Article Management Tab) in the view panel - this shows you the status of translations. 
  • Also choose Draft Translations or Published Translations radio button (that doesn't look like a radio button because the options are too far away from each other). 
• Then go back to the Article Tab to publish the Article with the translations. 

Editing Articles with Translations

So you want to make one sentence change in the English article. I would do everything in the Article Management Tab

• In the articles tab choose Published Articles.
• Open the Article you want to edit
• Edit the article. 
• Save it. 
• (optionally publish the article in English at this stage)
• Submit for Translation
• Go back to Article Management
• Choose the Translations tab
• Find the translation in either draft or published. 
• Edit the translation
• Publish the translation
• Go back to Article Management
• Choose the Articles tab. 
• Find the article you want
• Publish the article. 

All that seems pretty ludicrous if you are doing this all yourself. It is less silly when you are in a large team and it is someone different's responsibility to publish articles than translate them. 

Public Site

I'm (unfortunately) using Public Knowledge for Mobile, Web and Facebook, but thankfully one of the things it is good at is managing translations. Just set your Public Knowledge Base to allow for multiple languages and the Language switcher will appear on the page, and will switch to the desired language. 

Notes

My client has in-house translators, so I am not having to worry about exporting and importing translations. Let us know in the comments if you have done this and what the gotchas are. 

I'm also not using approval processes etc, and the translators are the knowledge managers also, so my notes are very simplified.