How to add a new Language for Knowledge articles?

[Marek Stepien]

We added language plugins for two languages (Japanese and Chinese). 
Those plugins installed translations for all labels in the sytem, and also added language mechanism for those articles to knowledge articles. 

We need to add additional languages (eg. Spanish, Korean) for knowledge articles use only, to present articles in those languages to our customers. However, we do not want to install new plugins that adds a tone of translations, and allows the customers to change the (Customer Service) portal to that language (in user Profile), and allows our back-end developers to change the console in the new language (in System Settings dialog).

We need new languages just to write articles in those languages to allow users to select articles in those languages. 

Anyone knows how to configure it? 

I found that we can "add" a new language to the system by adding a new record to the Choices list for the Language field of the sys_user table. By doing it, we can write articles for the added language, and customers can select articles for that language at the portal. 
However, the new languages shows in User Profile and System Settings. 
I know how to remove it from User Profile (writing a filter in 'User Profile' widget) to not show the language in customer's user Profile.
However, I do not know how to add a similar filter to System Settings dialog, so internal users do not have a possibility to choose the new language. Anyone knows? 

Any help will be appreciated. 

[Community Alums]

Hi @Marek Stepien ,

There are two translation tasks you need to perform : Platform Translation and dynamic translation

1) Platform translation -there is ServiceNow translation plugin for each country.  Such as: Japanese.  You need to activate this plugins.  The scope of this is only for system translation (table, label and app nd module name), not data  

2) Dynamic translate, which is for data translation.  You can use it for each app based.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VWA8vBasX4

Also,

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_video&sys_id=de39bc2fdb576810679499ead396190...

Mark my answer correct & Helpful, if Applicable.

Thanks,

Sandeep

[Marek Stepien]

Thank you Sandeep for the answer. 

However, we want to turn the language feature on in articles for about 20 different languages without installing the huge language plugins (it takes 5+ hours to install a plugin) that does a lot of stuff in the background such as: 

1) adds translations for all field labels in every table
2) adds the language to the System Settings dialog
3) adds the language to the portal User Profile
4) turns on the language mechanism for knowledge articles

We are interrested ony in the last item (item #4). 

By adding a record to the Choices list for the Language field of the sys_user table, we add the language to the system without the translation listed above under #1. 
Now we need to programmatically remove the language from the System Settings dialog, and the portal User Profile. I found how to do the latter, but I asking where in the code can I remove the language from the Language pull down menu of the System Settings dialog.

Thanks,
Marek

[Alex Coope - SN]

@Marek Stepien 

Ok so there's quite a few things to unpack here,

the first being, would it be a good user experience for end-users to have to search / navigate to content in a different language to what they want to consume? - best practice usually suggests no, hence our language packs include all the ootb ui translations,

the second being, whilst it is absolutely possible, is it best for the end user? which might sound related, but I'm actually proposing the idea of technical debt (hiding / removing the ability of selecting those languages in the portal),

So, pre Rome you would typically add an entry into [sys_language] for those languages and an option per language in [sys_user].preferred_language (because that field's choices is what drives the settings widget, the language field on articles and the user's preference.

I'd highly recommend you review my following blog post here first on our Language guide and our CSC page here so that you can make the best informed decision, feel free to check out my webinars as I actually go through this in the ESC session,


Many thanks,
Kind regards

[Marek Stepien]

@Alex Coope , 

Thank you for your post and information. I'm still digesting the information.

Yes, handling languages is pretty commplex. Let me write our use case.

We have two groups administrating ServiceNow instances, the system group, and the knowledge group. The system group installed two additional languages, Japanese and Chinese, and decided not to install more languages for now. The system team was burned out with the installation, and they decided not to install additional languages.
They needed to translate a lot of labels/notifications for modifications, since we have a lot of modifications to the system. Then after the release, we got a huge number of complains about incorrect translations, and many of the complain were on the original ServiceNow translation--it looks the default translation were incorrect in our context we use serviceNow. It took us about 1/2 year to correct the translations. Then the management desided not to install additional languages for now.

However we produce knowledge articles in many languages (right now we have articles in 10+ additional languages). Since we do not have the language packs installed, all of those articles are represented as English (The Lanuage field is set to English for them).
We are looking for a mechanism to handle those languages articles. We need to resolve the following issues:
1. In the back-end, we need to see which of the articles are translations from English or other languages.
2. The customers need to have a possibility to search for articles in their language and a way to separate them from other languages.
3. We developed a notification module that allows the customers to subscribe for articles for the products they bought (we have 30+ products). We need to add preferences to that module, so the customers can choose for wich language articles they want to get notifications. Now English customers get notifications for articles in 10+ different languages. 

The 'Dynamic Translations' would be beneficial to have, but this is a secondary issue. Now we need to resolve the above language issue for articles, since we are getting a lot of complains/requests from our customers.

Then the knowledge group is looking for a way to get the language mechanism for knowledge articles only, and not for the other parts of the system.

We are looking into to turn on the Language mechanism for Knowledge Articles, and hide the language mechanism for the other part of the system.

Best Regards,
Marek Stepien