When you want BlueConic to communicate with channel visitors in multiple languages, you need to configure these front-end languages in BlueConic Settings > General under "Language Settings". It is important to do this as early as possible, since adding an extra language in a later stage will require you to edit and review all your existing dialogues and variants.
Front-end languages in BlueConic
BlueConic plugins will typically base the language shown to a visitor on the language settings of the visitor's browser.
Dialogues are typically not dependent on the language of your webpage. To let the language of your dialogues be dependent on the language of your webpage, either use custom plugins that do a locale check based on the website, or configure BlueConic for only a single language and create dialogues with different language content for different language webpages.
Language Settings
Under "BlueConic Settings > General", under "Language Settings" you can manage the languages that BlueConic will support in dialogues. By default, only a single language is activated in the BlueConic settings; this means you will not be confronted with the "Language" property to change language of the dialogue content. However, when you add and activate new languages, they will then become available in the Properties widget on the "What" tab of any dialogue:
Each interaction can have multiple language versions. When BlueConic detects the locale of the browser that a visitor is using, it shows the dialogue content in the visitor's language (if available). If no dialogue content is available for the language of the visitor's browser, the dialogue content for the default language is shown.
Make sure you always add dialogue content for the default language, so there is always content to fall back to.
To add a language, follow these steps:
- Click Add Language.
- In the "Locale" field, enter the five-character letter code. This code consists of two characters in lowercase for the language, followed by an underscore (_), followed by two characters in upper case for the country variant. For example, "de_DE" for German or "es_MX" for Mexican Spanish, etc. For a complete list of language codes, see https://lingohub.com/developers/supported-locales/language-designators-with-regions. For details on how such locale codes are composed, see https://developers.google.com/search/docs/specialty/international/localized-versions?hl=en&visit_id=638167532922389418-4186126035&rd=1#language-codes
- Enter the human-readable name of the language as it appears in English in the "Name (English)" text box.
- Enter the human-readable name of the language as it appears in Dutch in the "Name (Dutch)" text box.
- Select the status of the new language ("Active" or "Inactive").
- Click Save.
BlueConic will display warnings you when your changes are dangerous for the content shown on your channels. For example, switching default language to a language without any dialogue content for variants would effectively show empty dialogues on your channels.
Select the language as "Default Language" that is to be used as the fallback language when a variant lacks a language specific variant for the visitor's browser.
Be aware that changing language settings might mean lots of changes across existing dialogues and variants. This is why the number of affected variants is shown under "Languages."