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Localize content

Serve your documentation in multiple languages. Configure target locales, manage translations per topic, export content as XLIFF for professional translators, and assign locales to publication targets.

Before you begin

This feature requires the Enterprise capability tier (the Business ). During the beta, every project is on the free Solo tier, so this feature is locked by default: go to Settings ▸ Billing and request Enterprise access to unlock it.

Configure locales

  1. Go to Settings in the sidebar.

  2. Open the Content & AI tab and find the Locales section.

  3. Your source locale (the language you author in) is displayed at the top.

  4. Click Add Locale to add a target language.

  5. Select a locale from the quick-add chips (common languages) or enter a BCP 47 code manually (for example, de-DE, ja, or pt-BR).

  6. Click Add.

Locale codes follow the BCP 47 standard. The format is language or language-REGION, for example fr (French) or fr-CA (Canadian French).

Translation panel

Open the Translation panel in the right sidebar of the topic editor to manage translations for the current topic:

  • Status grid: shows each configured locale with a status indicator:

    • Missing: no translation exists

    • Draft: translation is in progress

    • Translated: translation is complete

    • Stale: the source content has changed since the translation was last updated (marked with a warning icon)

  • Coverage summary: shows the percentage of locales with up-to-date translations

Export XLIFF

Export content as XLIFF 2.0 files for professional translators or translation management systems:

  1. In the translation panel, click Export XLIFF.

  2. Choose the scope:

    • Single locale: export translations for one target language.

    • All locales: export a bundle of XLIFF files for every configured target language.

  3. The download contains one .xliff file per locale, with source and target segments.

Import XLIFF

Import completed translations back into Topicary:

  1. In the translation panel, click Import XLIFF.

  2. Select the XLIFF file(s) to import.

  3. Choose an import mode:

Mode

Behavior

Merge

Overlays the translated content onto the existing matching topics

New

Creates new translated topic copies from the imported content

Translation

Upserts content into the topic's translation for a specific locale

XLIFF import supports three workflows: updating existing topics with new translations (merge), creating new topics from translated content (new), or upserting translated content into a topic's translation for a specific locale (translation).

The Translation import mode overwrites the target-locale translation for every topic present in the imported file. Use this mode when you want a fresh set of translations from your provider rather than an incremental update.

Assign a locale to a publication target

Each publication target can serve a specific locale:

  1. Go to the Publishing section and open a target's settings.

  2. Set the Locale field to the desired language.

  3. When published, the target serves translated content for that locale. If a topic has no translation for the assigned locale, the source-language content is used as a fallback.

Changes to content reach your published site within 24 hours as its cache refreshes. To push updates live right away, click Update on the affected .

Phrase TMS integration

For large-scale translation workflows, connect Connect Phrase TMS to automate XLIFF export, translation, and re-import.

Auto-polling

When a translation job is sent to Phrase, Topicary automatically polls for completion, up to 20 checks at 5-minute intervals. When the job completes, the translated XLIFF is downloaded and imported automatically.

Phrase webhook

As an alternative to polling, configure a Phrase webhook callback to notify Topicary immediately when a translation job completes. This avoids polling delays and is recommended for high-volume translation workflows.

Use the Phrase webhook for faster turnaround on translation jobs. Polling works reliably but introduces up to a 5-minute delay between job completion and import.

See also

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