Real multi language app

koen1 · 2025-02-19T15:12:30.390Z

hi everyone, this must have been solved already… but I only found 2+ year old forum posts pre-AI.

what’s the best way to build a multi-lingual app?

We are now bi-lingual dutch/english. and using the bubble built-in app text.
but already for 2 languages it’s a lot of work.

And we have user-generated content that we now cannot translate. we ask our users to use their built-in browser translator. but that’s not really a good user experience, and there is no control/improvement possible on the translations they see…

We also have quite some emails (now only in English) that we send to users.

And very specifically: we have option sets / data types that are used in dropdowns/filters that show up now only in 1 language.

If I would dive deep I would probably find more challenges with making an app truly multi-lingual.

So would love to hear all your tips on how to really do this right and simple!

Thanks again, Koen

qtn.dbr · 2025-02-19T21:24:14.781Z

Hi mate,

App text works good but deginitely is time consuming for sûr you’re right.
I use Weglot to translate apps if needed but don’t think it will translate emails
Best go check on them to see if what they offer can suit your need

koen1 · 2025-02-20T08:07:19.520Z

@qtn.dbr thanks man! I looked into Weglot before but didnt find much on how it works within Bubble.

Does it also translate database text that is displayed in the frontend? or does it only translate text just like bubbles app text?

jules.marcilhacy · 2025-02-20T08:33:18.210Z

@koen1 yes it does translate everything including dynamic data

Hello there,

I am also in the process of changing the way we use multi-language. We have bee usin app texts for a couple of years but are willing to switch to weglot.

FYI we find app texts very time consuming to manage (editor is not adapted and slow), bad for SEO (we use url parameters everywhere), and have an impact on performance.

Weglot seems to solve the 3 issues mentioned above, now we have an issue with the setup in the 2 options weglot provide.

1/ Using subdirectories (recommended)

We glot manages urls automatically to add the language code in the url. https://cuure.com/products becomes https://cuure.com/it/products when in italian.

The issue is that you loose it when using “go to page” and, unless there is a solution i am not aware of, one would need to use only “open extrernal website” when navigating from within workflows, which is not ideal.

2/ using sub domains

Everything works fine except that you cannot login from another url than the main url. So if your app has a login experience (which we do have) you are stuck with this.

I hope this help you move forward with your research and hopefully someone can help me solve one of the 2 issues i face

Cheers,
Jules

koen1 · 2025-02-21T12:28:17.689Z

thanks @jules.marcilhacy ! this helps me already a lot. and I indeed someone else can contribute on yours. I would expect to run into similar issues…

great to hear that weglot can do live translate of database text items!

votterskog · 2025-03-12T18:39:11.183Z

the user generated content will be a little challenge but not impossible if you really need to as there is AI.
emails. in my app I use postmark. I have an “only when: users’ preferred language is en_us” and another action with the same only when but for another language.
The dropdown issue is quite easily solved with option sets. Try searching this forum for multi-language. Erlendne has a good solution for example.

koen1 · 2025-03-13T07:54:06.978Z

thanks @votterskog ! quick follow-up question on how you use multi-language emails in Postmark. Did you manually setup the emails in different languages? or does Postmark offer a good automatic translation?

I understand how to set it up with a manual “only when”. but we have ~80 emails. So hope there is an automatic AI translation that would do it for us. Is that something that Postmark does for you?

thanks! Koen

votterskog · 2025-03-13T11:02:59.435Z

Not that I know of, I manually translated the emails and pasted into postmark. Simple, but 80 emails will take a few hours. I’m just about starting to translate my app as well. And yes, the emails…
I will end up with 7 languages or so…
I will probably create a custom workflow for each email in the backend, where I will have all language translations, and the correct one will go to postmark.

Copy paste the email into GPT, HTML and all, have him translate it quickly and then straight back into postmark?!