How to request translations with Unbabel for Zendesk Guide

To start requesting translations, make sure you have read through the steps on how to integrate your Help Center with Unbabel and have your language setup properly configured. A language will only show up as available to translate to if it matches the source language to form a supported language pair.

You can access our integration web page at https://kb.unbabel.com. You can access the page directly, using your Customer Portal credentials, or log in to the Portal first and then select the Zendesk Guide app from the Apps launcher button in the top right corner of the screen.

Once you log in, Unbabel will automatically screen your Help Center for the article's status. We will typically look for new articles, articles lacking translations in your supported languages, and changes to articles since the last translation was delivered by Unbabel (whether they are Published or Drafts). Note: we can only detect translations that have been delivered by Unbabel. If your article has both a default version and one or more translations completed outside Unbabel, we will not have visibility over them. 

Please bear in mind that Unbabel will read any updates when the tool is launched, so be sure to only log in to https://kb.unbabel.com after you finish and save all intended changes in Zendesk. Any changes performed after you start the sessions will not be reflected in the translation.

If you are managing multiple brands, this will occur separately for each one once you select a brand from the list displayed initially.

Automatically selecting articles for translation

As the screening is completed, we will summarize all articles in need of translation (languages missing, changes made, etc). You have the possibility of immediately proceeding with a translation request for these articles, by clicking the Select Articles button and then Request Translation, and all articles meeting these criteria will be selected. All you need to do is confirm the translation request as described below, select the target languages and confirm the request.

Manually selecting articles for translation

It is possible to manually select which articles are due for translation, by navigating the left pane through the category and section paths. The parent folder will be the selected Zendesk brand, identified by its subdomain. Expanding the folder will reveal all categories, and picking a category will display all the sections contained therein. 

You are able to find your articles once you select a section. Articles within the section will display in the center pane, along with their status. Articles that have been subject to changes since the last translation, and sections and categories containing such articles will be identified by a red dot preceding them. You can also check on the article's status for additional clues:

• "No translations yet" - The article hasn't been translated at all
• "Translation in progress" - The article is still being translated in at least one of the selected target languages
• "Translated" - The article was successfully translated into the listed target languages
• "Changed" - The source article was edited after being translated

All articles will display a center column listing the languages Unbabel has translated them to in this view.

Clicking an article title will display its translation details, namely, the languages it has been translated to, the status of those translations, and the date of the last translation request.

Confirming the translation request

After you've selected the articles you wish to translate, you may click on Request Translation on the top right corner of the screen. This will open a new window.

Here, you will have one last chance to select or deselect the articles you wish to translate (1). Confirm your source language (2), pick your target languages from the drop down list (3) and order the translations (4). From here on, all you need to do is wait until they are completed! Once they are, a translated version for the article will become available as a draft in Guide Admin.

Category and section titles and descriptions

If you are looking into a child folder, you will find a row containing the info about its parent folder above each view. It will read the section name (if you are looking at listed articles) or the category name (if you are looking at sections). The checkbox before the section/category name will allow you to select/deselect all child items (that is, all sections and articles within a category, and all articles within a section). 

We will translate any section and category titles and descriptions for which at least one child article has had one translation requested. If this has not happened before, it is normal that you find the checkboxes selected even when selecting a single article for translation.

Character limitations

Zendesk has a native limitation on the number of characters an article title may have, set at 255 characters. While your English title may be under this limit, due to the phenomenon of text expansion during translation, the limit may be exceeded. Text expansion consists of the target language taking more space and/or using more characters than the original source once the content is translated.

On average, foreign languages use up 30% more characters than English. As such, we recommend that whenever possible, you don't exceed 150 characters in the original EN title of your articles.