Translations let you offer your website and booking flow in additional languages. Every translatable field gets an automatic translation, and you can fine-tune any wording you want to change!
This article walks through the setup. For a plain-language overview of what Translations covers, see Translations for ThinkWeb.
Before you start
You'll need a ThinkWeb website. Once Translations is available on your account, you'll find it in the top-left dropdown menu.
If you don't see Translations in that menu, reach out to our support team and we'll take a look.
Support for clients using the online booking engine is planned for a future release.
Step 1: Add your languages
From the top-left dropdown menu, click Translations.
In the left-hand navigation, select Languages.
Click Add.
Choose a language from the dropdown.
Click Add to confirm.
Repeat for each language you want to offer. There's no limit, so you can add as many of the 12 supported languages as you like.
A note on regional variants. Several languages come in region-specific pairs: Chinese (Simplified) and Chinese (Traditional), French and French (Canada), Portuguese (Portugal) and Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish and Spanish (Mexico). Wording and idiom differ between them, so pick the variant that matches where your guests actually come from. If you draw guests from both, add both.
Step 2: Review and adjust your translations
In the left-hand navigation, select Content.
Choose one of the languages you added.
Review the content by type: Area, Hotel, Items, Packages, Pages, Rate Types, Room Types, Rooms, and ThinkWeb Configuration.
Your original text appears on the left. The automatic translation appears on the right. To change any translation, edit the text on the right and save. Overrides work one string at a time, so you can rewrite a single room description and leave everything else automatic.
Confirm your language selection as you go. If you move between pages inside Translations, double-check that the language you're working in is still selected in the dropdown before you start typing. That keeps you from entering text against the wrong language.
Worth doing before you publish: automatic translation is a strong starting point for most content. For the strings that carry the most weight, cancellation and deposit policies, terms, and anything a guest could reasonably dispute later, we recommend having a native speaker review the wording first.
Step 3: Publish
Your translations don't appear on your live site until you publish.
From the top-left dropdown menu, click ThinkWeb.
Choose Publish from the left-hand menu.
Click the Publish button.
Your translations are now live. If you already had your website open in another tab or browser, refresh the page to see the update.
Keeping translations current
Automatic translations update themselves. Edit a room description in your original language and the automatic translation follows. No action needed.
Manual overrides are marked stale instead. If you rewrote a translation by hand and later edit the original text, we flag that translation as stale so you know to review it. It's a prompt, not an error.
For most properties, the best balance is to let automatic translation handle the bulk of your content and save manual overrides for the handful of strings where precision matters: brand voice, policies, signature room descriptions.
Troubleshooting
My translations aren't showing on my site. Check that you've published. Translations are entered in the Translations module but go live through ThinkWeb → Publish. If your site was already open in another tab, refresh it.
Why didn't my translation update when I edited my room description? That translation was manually overridden. Manual overrides don't update on their own; they get flagged as stale so you can revise them. Automatic translations update by themselves.
My translation went into the wrong language. Check the language dropdown in the Translations module. If you navigated between pages, the selection may have changed. Confirm the right language is selected, then re-enter the text.
I edited a translation, but my original text didn't change. That's expected. Translation runs one direction only, from your original content out to each language. To change the original, edit the source content directly.
My property name and address are still in my original language. That's by design. Both stay as-is in every language, so your address remains usable for maps, taxis, and mail, and your property name stays recognizable to guests and on their card statements.
My guest booked in Spanish but received an English confirmation email. Confirmation emails, pre-arrival messages, and text messages aren't translated. They send in whatever language your templates are written in.
Still stuck? Contact our support team, and we'll help you sort it out!