Within your Thinkific site, you have the ability to set a default Site language and can optionally allow students to override this default if they have a language preference!
In this article:
Allow Students to Choose Their Site Language
Use Third-Party Tools (e.g. Weglot)
Other Ways to Support a Multi-Language Experience
Allow Students to Choose Their Site Language
In order to support students who speak multiple languages with a single Thinkific site, you can enable students to choose their own language. This will allow your students to select a language that best suits them, and the key default site messages (buttons, menus and so on - everything other than content you've created) will appear in their language of choice.
Note that language settings apply to site default text only. This includes text like default Buy buttons, the "Sign in" text on the top right of your header, checkout text, and Course Player navigation text. Language settings do not apply to any custom text included within your course lessons and site pages.
To enable this feature:
- From your Admin Dashboard, select Settings
- Select the Learning Content tab
- Click Language settings on the left
- Make sure your default Site Language is set as desired
- Click the checkbox beside Allow students to override the site language
- Click Save
When you do this, students will have the option to choose from any of the languages we support. Depending on their browser, they would see the top bar asking them to translate the text, like so:
And they can change the language of the site at any time from their logged in, student profile view.
Use Third-Party Tools (e.g. Weglot)
Certain tools allow you to automatically translate content on your Thinkific site pages, including the content you added. Weglot is the most popular third-party tool and can be easily implemented by adding custom code to your Site Footer!
Below are the instructions on how to use Weglot with Thinkific, but similar steps apply to other third-party tools:
- Sign up for Weglot
- During the account setup process, when asked what tools you use for your site, choose Other
- Skip the DNS setup
- Find the provided JavaScript code
- Copy the code
- Follow these instructions and add the code to the Site Footer: Site Footer Code.
And that's it!
Refer to the site of your chosen third-party tool to confirm the behaviour of the selected tool and for detailed instructions on how to find the correct JavaScript code.
Other Ways to Support a Multi-Language Experience
1. Create one Thinkific site and offer course content for multiple languages. Features you can utilize include:
- Use Custom Pages to create pages displaying your courses in your desired language and link to each custom page in your site Header
- To speed up the course creation process, create your course in one language, Duplicate the Course and translate the copy into another language
- Use Categories to help organize your courses into different languages
2. On a Plus plan, use multiple Thinkific sites to have a dedicated site for each language. For example, you can have one site for English-translated site pages and courses and a second site for Spanish-translated site pages and courses. Features you can utilize include:
- In your first site's Language settings, apply one site language and create your desired course content. In your second site's Language settings, select your second desired language and recreate courses in the second language. Contact support for details on copying course content to your second site if needed.
- You can also consider linking to both sites in each site's Header!