Multiple Languages

Ricardo Updated by Ricardo

हैलो. Hello. Olá. Hola. مرحبا

Turn.io's multi-language feature allows you to create WhatsApp journeys that serve customers in their preferred language. You can translate messages, templates, and triggers while automatically detecting and serving content based on user language preferences.

Setting up your languages is simple:

  1. Head over to your Settings

And open the Journeys tab.

  1. Set your number’s default language

The default language is the language you build your Journeys with. This is also the default language for any users who don’t have any language preferences set yet, or the fallback language for parts of a Journey that aren’t translated.

Tip: we recommend setting this default language to a language your team speaks, so that it’s easier for them to build and manage journeys.
  1. Set additional languages

Then, you can add additional languages — as many as you’d like to provide your service in.

Currently, we support WhatsApp's supported official list of languages.

Translating Journeys

After you’ve set your language settings, you’ll notice a language dropdown appears inside journeys on the top left.

As mentioned earlier, the default language is the language you build your Journeys in.

When you’re ready to translate to the other languages, simply switch languages and translate anything needed. In this mode, you can’t edit your Journey (e.g. moving cards, adding new cards, etc).

Currently, you’re able to translate:

  • All messages
  • Templates
  • Triggers (e.g. if you have a trigger that’s Hello, you can translate it to Hola)
  • AI instructions

Showing Journeys in the user's language

To show your journeys in the right language, you need to capture the user's language preferences somewhere in your journeys (for example, during onboarding) and save that in the Language profile field.

Here's an example:

As soon as that language field is set to a language your Journeys have been translated to, the Journey automatically switches to that language — no extra work required.

We created a Playbook to help you get started: https://whatsapp.turn.io/app/playbooks/d0d093c5-acdd-4a02-b493-388a739470ac

Testing languages

On the Journey Preview: when you switch to another language inside a Journey, we’ll automatically preview that journey in the selected language.

On WhatsApp, you can either go through the flow and select a specific language, or go to your own profile on the People page and set the language you want to test for yourself.

FAQ

What happens if I forgot to translate something?

We’ll fall back to the default language, so that the Journey is able to continue.

Supported languages

We follow WhatsApp’s supported languages.

How do I set a language via code?

Turn follows the ISO-639-3 standard, coupled with BCP47.

So, for example, if you want to provide your service in Portuguese, you’d use “por”.

But if you want to provide your service in multiple local versions of Portuguese, you could use por_BR and por_PT. 

Can I import my user’s language information if I already have it?

If you already have this information, You can use the Import feature on the People page — making sure that you provide it in the ISO format mentioned above.

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