One knowledge base, many languages
Translation is not a one-off project - it is a maintenance problem. TheDocs tracks which translations are current, which drifted when the source changed, and which never existed.
- 60+ languages
- Per-article status
- hreflang handled
How does multi-language documentation work in TheDocs?
Each article has one source language and any number of translations. A translation can be produced by machine, imported from a translation vendor, or written by hand, and it carries a status: missing, machine-translated, in review, or approved. When the source article changes, every translation is flagged out of date and shows exactly what changed, so reviewers update the affected passage rather than the whole page.
- 60+ languages for machine translation and portal interface.
- Per-article, per-version translation status.
- Out-of-date translations show a diff of the source change.
- Choose to hide untranslated articles or fall back to the source language.
- Correct hreflang, language URLs and localised metadata emitted automatically.
- Right-to-left languages fully supported in the reading experience.
How a translation stays current
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01
Source is published
You write in your source language. Nothing else has to happen yet - translation is not a blocker for shipping the original.
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02
A draft translation appears
Machine-translated on demand or in bulk, with code, links, variables and do-not-translate terms preserved.
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03
A human reviews it
A reviewer for that language approves or edits. You decide whether unreviewed translations are visible to readers in the meantime.
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04
The source changes
Every translation is flagged out of date with a diff of what changed, so the fix is a paragraph rather than a page.
The parts that break in other tools
Knowing what is current
The failure mode is not bad translation. It is a perfectly good translation of a procedure that changed six months ago.
- A coverage matrix: articles down the side, languages across the top, status in every cell.
- Filter to 'out of date and getting traffic' to find the translations that are actively misleading someone.
- Bulk-assign out-of-date articles to a language reviewer with a due date.
- Optional reader-facing notice on translations that are behind the source.
Translating without breaking the article
A translation that mangles a code sample or a product name creates support tickets of its own.
- Code blocks, inline code and command examples are never translated.
- Variables and snippet references survive; a snippet is translated once and reused everywhere.
- Maintain a do-not-translate glossary for product names, feature names and UI labels.
- Internal links are rewritten to the equivalent article in the target language where one exists.
Import and export via XLIFF is supported, so a translation agency can work in its own tools and the results come back with status intact.
Getting found in the right language
Multi-language documentation that search engines cannot interpret ends up competing with itself.
- hreflang annotations generated across all published languages, including x-default.
- Language-specific URLs, either as a path prefix or a subdomain.
- Titles, meta descriptions and structured data localised, not just the body text.
- Language chosen from the URL first and the browser second, so a shared link always opens in the language it was shared in.
Related features
Questions people ask before they start
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Questions first? Email sales@thedocs.in or call +91 8585953085.