Feature request - Content localizable

[AriasBros]

Desired Feature

In my organization we need to have our content in several languages. Do you have in your roadmap implement localizable content?

Current Behavior

In this moment we can create books/chapters/pages in the languages we need, but translations have no connection to each other and all content in all languages appears to the user.

Expected Behavior

Would be fantastic if only the content in the current language of the user is shown, with links to the available translations and fallback to the default language if missing translation.

If you have not planned this functionality yet, I would like to collaborate with you by implementing it.

[ssddanbrown]

Hi @AriasBros, Thank you for your suggestion. This is currently not on the roadmap as it has not been requested before.

To be totally honest this is quite a chunky feature that will require maintenance so I'd be apprehensive about including this without a very high demand.

[AlexWerz]

I plan to use BookStack to add books in multiple languages. The user can then decide which language of the book (in my case manuals) he wants to read. This makes updates easier as they often just need to be translated from the english master. As this is not a feature (yet?) I plan on using tags to set the language and book shelfs to organize languages. Are there any other approaches currently used for maintaining different languages of the same book?

[Drakone]

COmmunecter aimerait également pouvoir proposer sa documentation en plusieurs langues : doc.co.tools. La solution proposée par @AlexWerz est intéressante. On va essayer.

[Orchal]

Hi,

I'm also very interested by this feature as I work in a public research organization which is international. Sure we can use tags and double all the pages but it would be very nice to have a language switch somewhere and only have one language displayed at the same time.

By the way thank you for all your work, this is pretty good!

[lreiher]

I also want to express my need for a multi-language wiki. Of course most of us understand English nowadays, but it would definitely help a lot if certain pages could simply be read in your preferred language with English as the fallback.

Thanks for all your work so far!

[TobiasDax]

Any updates on this? Is there a roadmap for this feature?

[ssddanbrown]

@TobiasDax I'm afraid not, no updates and this is currently not on the roadmap.

[p2kkx]

First of all: Thanks for this amazing software! I really love it!

I also have a need for a translation feature. I write manuals with BookStack and would make my life so much easier. You said it will be hard to implement. Maybe starting with a "lite" approach would make it easier. What I mean is e.g.:

1. Click on edit page 1.1 Click on create translation
2. Page is copied to \language\pageName
3. Translation can be done by just replacing the old text line by line more or less
4. Save

I know it will be hard to deal with updates, this would require more complex code. But with this solution at least the pages are directly connected to each other and I can switch between them. And other editor will instantly see that there is another translation that needs to be updated. In the bookshelf he will forget about that.

[Drakone]

Here is the method I used while waiting for the new feature: : https://doc.co.tools/shelves

[p2kkx]

@Drakone so you basically have two shelves for different languages or did I miss something? As I wrote having multiple shelves / books is not really what I want because it makes it hard to connect the single pages directly with each other.

[tgraveleau]

Hey, We have customers from different country and we would appreciate this feature too. Hope it will be available.

[tcatlas]

Our organization has a need for this. Throwing in my hat for support.

[ferranrego]

Hello! I think this could be an amazing feature to have, as Bookstack could work also as a Help Center. I would love to see it for my project, any update on this? Did you reconsider adding this feature on the roadmap?

Thanks!

[Ombrelin]

Hello, I love Bookstack and I second what was said : translatable books would be a great new feature

[gagarine]

We are publishing free school book. We are using automatic translation to make them accessible to a wider audience. We are looking to a new platform but content translation at the page level is a must. One viable option at the moment seem Drupal but it will require lot of customisation.

[digitall-it]

You guys are incredible. Thank you.

[dhigby]

We live in a multilingual world. I love the BookStack app and experimented with the demo site. It is a great solution, one of the best I've seen, but I can't go with it because my Book/manual needs to be kept up to date in between 2-7 different languages.

[ssddanbrown]

Just to re-confirm my position on this, since it's been a while:

I appreciate this would help out a bunch of different use-cases, but it would be a fairly bulky feature to implement while being hard & time consuming to work this into the platform in a manner that does not hinder the user-experience of existing non-multi-linugal use-cases. Additionally, the kind of changes this would entail would have an ongoing dragging cost on future further development.

I was recently approached by a charity that wanted to use BookStack, with this feature being a requirement; and while I really wanted to support them by looking to implement this feature, I could not warrant the cost it would have, at least at this point in the project's life.

[SubJunk]

I would be very interested in this as well. If I contributed a Pull Request to make a version of the feature, would you be interested, or still no?

[ssddanbrown]

@SubJunk thanks for offering but likely not due to my concerns above.

[soflane]

First, thanks so much for this amazing soft! I'm starting using it as much for my work and personal life. I came from wiki.js and bookstack is way better for my usage, and for an internal doc use In a business. But indeed I had translation in wikijs and it's kinda a pain in the ass where I have different books with plenty of pages to manage. I would looove to have this feature implemented, as I already love this app and I will use it everyday more! Big up for this soft! Peace, love & unity ✌️

[AliShaatani]

thank you for this awesome piece of application, but, as you can see, you can't use it, as an official knowledge base section, without multi-language selection since the public visitor may want to change language, in certain places like technical documentation, where you need to use universal language, which is English in this case, and other languages in places like help and how to

[a-mawlawi]

Thanks to the maintainers for this great app, and I vote for the multilingual feature also. +1

[ssoulaimana]

+1 for multi language support in Bookstack. Thanks

[jasell]

+1 for multi-language support and easy/predefined integration to translation management system (like Crowdin or other).

[robertfshort]

+1 for this feature

[ffranchina]

Hello everyone! I was about to open a feature request for a kind of relatable feature but I thought that maybe would be better to ask here first and, in case, discuss it.

Proposal From the perspective of the semantic web it would be quite nice to be able to specify the language of a single book though the attribute lang (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Global_attributes/lang): it can improve the indexing and the accessibility of the resources and it can be useful also for retrieving the resources in an automatable way. Such change should be quite easy to implement since it is just an additional attribute to store for every book and could be shown only at html-level (for elements that are data-entity-type="book", for instance).

Such feature could also be implemented in a less invasive way though the usage of the already implemented tags but it would require anyway some custom logic in order to place the respective lang attribute in the html.

Extensions Having such feature implemented could also open to some interesting scenarios:

• By means of some CSS would be possible to show only items written in a certain language
• Could allow to write some bots to retrieve only resources written in a specific language
• Up to some extent, a kind of multi-language experience can be achieved with few customization of the code

Conclusions I think this would be a valuable addition by itself, but can also be seen as starting point for interesting scenarios. I think I will end up implementing such feature by myself but, if welcomed by @ssddanbrown, I would be very happy of implementing it according to his view of the project!

Thanks!

[ssddanbrown]

Hi @ffranchina, Thanks for putting forward the idea. From my perspective I'd rather crawl towards a fuller solution than sooner implement a half-solution that does not have direct and/or clear usage/benefit within the system itself. I can see how your proposed idea may help in some scenarios but I try not to implement features based upon possibilities or opening interesting scenarios, Instead I try to focus on fundamental desires that fit the usage of BookStack and the vocal desire is proper multi language page support.

If your proposal would help you at the current time, I believe this could be done with tags (as you mention) along with the visual theme system to apply the lang tags where required. If you'd like some further guidance on that feel free to open a new issue.

---

Just to state my updated view on this, since it's been almost a year, I'm still aligned with my previous view but there's a potential chance I may soon transition to work on the project full time and hence it may be more feasible to include. Either way things go, page-translations will be in mind when making other fundamental changes to slowly get us moving towards the feature, or at least not fully block us off.

[jasell]

What are your plans for managing the translations? Do you plan to integrate with existing TMS systems, like Crowdin? Or are you planning to build your own translation support? I spoke to Crowdin and they are happy to support as they wish to see more platforms integrating their support (as they gain business from that).

[ssddanbrown]

What are your plans for managing the translations? Do you plan to integrate with existing TMS systems, like Crowdin?

I have no specific plans for that. The primary goal would be multiple languages per page in the current editor experiences. Automation outside of that would probably be delegated to API use via external apps/middleware. Doesn't make sense for us to support specific translation services/platforms.