You can offer written parts of your website in multiple languages, making it easier for your global audience to navigate your site and understand what they are purchasing. The languages we currently support are English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Japanese, and Korean.
💡Tip: Your site's language will always default to English unless the visitor's browser language is set to one of the supported languages.
There are two major parts to translating your site:
- Enabling the ability for other languages to display on your site. This will also enable the automatic translation of some universal text found on all Vimeo OTT sites.
- Supplying manual translations for custom areas of your site.
In this article:
- Enable support for other languages
- What Vimeo OTT translates for you
- Supply custom translations for your site
- What can’t be translated?
- What determines the language displayed for customers on the web?
- Do translations work on branded apps?
Enable support for other languages
For any translation--automatic and custom--to appear on your OTT site, you first need to enable the ability for your site to display in those languages.
To enable translations to supported languages:
- From the OTT site admin, navigate to Settings > Site.
- In the General tab that opens by default, scroll down to the bottom of the page where you can find Supported languages.
- Select each checkbox that corresponds to the language(s) you wish to display on your site.
- Select Save in the upper right corner to apply these settings.
⚠️Note: It is not possible to uncheck English. - Now when someone visits your site, they can scroll down to the bottom of any page on the site to find a Language dropdown menu in the lower right corner select among the enabled languages, and translate your site. The translation will be in effect for the entire site as the user navigates from page to page.
What Vimeo OTT translates for you
Some text on your site is provided by Vimeo OTT and is universal across all sites hosted on Vimeo OTT. As a result, enabling support for translations will automatically translate this default text, which includes:
- Standard top navigation menu links (“Browse,” “Forums,” “Search,” “Start free trial,” “Log in”)
- Promo banners
- Checkout page (except the product title and description; more on that below)
⚠️Note: This does not apply to sellers who utilize their payment gate. - Standard category names (e.g. “Movies,” “Titles available for purchase”)
- Standard buttons (e.g. “Subscribe,” “Show more,” “View all”)
- Standard footer links (e.g. “Forums,” “Help”)
- Translated banners at the top of legal pages (Terms of Service, Cookie policy, Copyright policy, Privacy policy)
⚠️Note: These written policies are only available in English now; the translated banners will note this in the selected language. - System emails such as password resets, sign-in links, etc.
- If your customer reports that these are displaying in English, they should navigate to their account settings > Notifications, then select their preferred language.
Supply custom translations for your site
There are numerous text fields that we cannot translate for you, but you can custom-translate yourself. This way, if a customer selects a different language, it will display your translation rather than the default English text. These settings include:
- Site title and description
- Product titles and descriptions (this impacts both your marketing pages and the checkout page)
- Custom receipt message
- Text assets in the theme editor (these will have the most impact on your main marketing page)
- Video Title and Short/Long description
- Collection Title and Short/Long description
- Category Title and Short/Long description
Under each of these fields will be an Add translations option. Click this to reveal a language dropdown menu.
Choose a language and enter the corresponding translated text in the fields that appear. You can repeat this step for each language.
If you do not want a translation to be available anymore, navigate back to that translated text and click Remove translations below the text fields.
The Hide translations link will simply collapse the translation text fields within the settings page; this is meant to help de-clutter the page.
Please be sure to save your settings before you're able to navigate away from the page. Doing so will allow someone who selects a translated version of your website to see the translated copy you entered for each field you translate.
Ensure you’ve enabled the languages you’ve added via your Site settings. Otherwise, your custom translations will not be available on your site.
What can’t be translated?
Currently, the following cannot be translated:
- Custom email copy (custom text for notifications, marketing newsletters, etc.)
- Legal Policies
- Forums
- Some error messages
- Site admin
- Support pages
-
Content notification emails
What determines the language displayed for customers on the web?
In addition to providing support for other languages in your site settings and supplying custom translations as discussed above, whether or not your customers see the translated text is determined based on either of the following:
- Their browser's language settings.
- Selecting their preferred language using the language dropdown menu at the bottom right corner of any page on your site.
Do translations work on branded apps?
Localization for branded apps is available in all seven supported languages at a cost per app. If you're interested in localizing your branded apps for Enterprise accounts, please contact your account manager or support.
If you’ve added localization to your app and a user’s device settings default to a supported language, the app will translate with no further action needed on the user’s part. For example, if you offer an iOS app and work with our team to translate it to Spanish, and a customer’s iOS device is set to Spanish in their general settings, then your app will display in Spanish for that customer.