Configure languages and missing translations

Customer Help supports English (United States), shown as en-US, and Spanish (Mexico), shown as es-MX. Your business’s public languages, each user’s portal language, a visitor’s language choice, and time zones are separate settings.

Business primary language

Business primary language is the default for company, brand, location, holiday, widget, and other customer-facing text. It is always published and cannot be cleared. Before changing it, review every translation and public page so incomplete content does not appear in the wrong language.

Secondary languages and order

Published business languages controls which additional languages customers can select. Check a language to offer it publicly, then use the up/down controls to set its order after the primary language. Publishing a language does not translate content; any missing text appears in the primary language.

Disabling a secondary language removes it from public language selection without deleting saved translations or profile preferences. Re-enabling it restores the saved content.

Deterministic public URLs

The primary business language always uses the public URL without a language prefix. Only a non-primary language adds a prefix:

Language when non-primary	Prefix	Brand example	Location example
Spanish (Mexico)	/es	/es/north-star	/es/north-star/locations/<location-id>
English (United States)	/en	/en/north-star	/en/north-star/locations/<location-id>

The same rule applies on an active primary custom domain. Its default brand uses / in the primary language and /es/ or /en/ in a non-primary language. Additional brands retain their page-link segment after the prefix.

Older links with ?lang=en-US or ?lang=es-MX permanently redirect to the corresponding deterministic URL. Each published version identifies its own canonical URL and reciprocal language alternatives. Browser preference and a previous language choice can guide visitors to a language, but they do not create another canonical version of the same clean URL.

Changing the business primary language changes which version is unprefixed. Review bookmarks, campaigns, custom-domain links, and both language versions after saving; compatible old forms redirect, but search engines can take time to process the new canonical relationship.

On Customer Help product marketing pages, the visible English and Español links keep the visitor on the equivalent page when that translation is published. For example, /privacy changes to /es/privacy, and /es/features/website-chat changes to /features/website-chat; the language link does not return the visitor to a language homepage.

Translation completeness

Each row shows translated fields out of the total fields that contain primary-language content, along with a percentage and the number that still use the primary language. The count includes company name, tagline, and description; brand name, tagline, description, logo, and main page text; location names; and holiday name and note. Other translated areas show their own status.

100% means all counted fields have content in that language. It does not prove translation quality, link validity, cultural appropriateness, or that every optional feature has translated text. Review with a qualified speaker.

Save and verify

Select Save changes, then open every brand and location page at each enabled language URL. A language selected in the page or shared link takes priority. Otherwise, Customer Help uses the visitor’s previous choice, browser preference, and then the business primary language. A visitor’s choice does not change your portal.

User language and time zone

In Profile, Portal language changes the interface for one user. Time zone controls how portal dates and times appear to that user. Neither changes customer-facing translations or a location’s schedule time zone. The initial user time zone is UTC until it is changed.

The portal loads interface language catalogs on demand. English loads when the English interface is active; when Spanish is active or selected, the browser requests the English fallback and Spanish catalogs together. If a selected catalog cannot be downloaded, the current interface language remains active and Customer Help shows a warning. For a saved portal-language failure, open the profile menu and select Try again after connectivity is restored. For a new selection, select the language again. The failed download is not kept as a completed catalog.

Permissions, billing, and visibility

Administrators manage business languages; each user manages personal regional preferences. Languages do not add a charge. Enabled languages and any primary-language text used in place of a missing translation are visible to customers. Disabling a language preserves its saved translations for later use.

Troubleshooting

• Spanish page shows English: add the missing Spanish text, enable Spanish, save, and select Spanish on the public page.
• Completeness is still below 100%: review the fields still showing primary-language text and every translation tab that has original content.
• Portal language changed but public page did not: expected—these are separate preferences.
• Time appears wrong: review the user’s time zone for portal times and the location’s time zone for schedules and calendars.