This document will go over best practices for guides with more than one language. We would recommend thinking about your timeline and starting your guide as soon as possible.
Guidebook Builder supports building guides in any language, and the Guidebook app also automatically translates the app copy to create a localized experience for your users.
In Builder, wherever you can enter text, you can input data in any language - the information you add will not automatically translate. You may even include your data in our import spreadsheets in any language. A word of warning, however: sometimes languages contain special characters that can act oddly upon import, and languages that read right to left may encounter some alignment issues. We recommend using LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice and a CSV template to upload your data.
If you are attempting to format your session times in 24-hour format, not to worry. While Builder may show your time in 12-hour format, the Guidebook app will display time in the format that matches your users’ hardware settings. That means if a user has their phone set to show time in 24-hour format, your guide will also show in 24-hour format.
Supported Localized Languages
The Guidebook app is currently localized for several widespread languages. Guidebook adjusts its language based on the language settings of users’ phones. If a user’s phone is set to the French language, the Guidebook app will adjust to show all non-guide content in French. Guidebook does not translate any data that you add to your guide.
While you can build a guide in any language, the Guidebook app is localized only for the languages below:
- English
- Bulgarian
- Czech
- German
- Greek
- Spanish
- Finnish
- French
- Hungarian
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Malay
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Russian
- Swedish
- Thai
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
- Vietnamese
- Chinese (Simplified)
iOS also supports Hebrew, Spanish (Spain) and Welsh.
Android also supports Spanish (Spain).
There are two ways to create multi-language guides:
- Create a separate guide for each language
- Using duplicate menu items, include all languages in a single guide
Create one app with a guide per language within it.
This allows you to design the guide based on the language. This option limits the use of community features, such as Interact, Photos and Check-In and Connect, as they would split attendees across guides via the language they speak.
Setting up this kind of multi-language guide is very simple.
- You create a guide, as normal.
- Once your guide is complete (or close) use the Copy Contents feature to duplicate the content into another guide for your second language.
- Invite Team Members to help with translation. To save time, we would recommend exporting your content to re-upload, once translated. This can be done for your schedule and custom lists.
Create a single app and guide.
This option is a little more complex but it gives you a greater sense of community and encourages engagement within your guide, as all your users are in the same digital space. This will enable your delegates to connect with each other via messages, photos and Interact posts without language being a limitation. We recommend using Folders to organize your content for each language, and Gated Lists for even further customization.
We will now go over your guides features, giving an overview of which can be duplicated for each language and how to manage the singular features.
Single Features
- General Information
- Google Maps
- Maps
- Schedule
- Interact
- Attendees & Messaging
- QR Scanner
- To-do list
- My Schedule
- Notes
- Inbox
How can I translate the content in these features if there can only be one?
Some of our features are for user-generated content so they will not have information until your users start to use them. This includes Interact, Attendees & Messaging, To-do list, My Schedule and Notes.
Here are some top tips of how to manage single-use features in your multi-language guide:
General Information: The General Info feature is designed to give your users basic info about your guide. We recommend adding: a description or welcome letter, the date of your event, info on how to use this guide to ensure your delegates are kept up to date. This can be replaced with a One-Tap Menu Item and Google Maps. To keep your guide organized, you could add these to a Folder.
Maps: Although you can only add the Maps features once, it is simple to duplicate in other ways. Static and interactive maps are uploaded as .jpg or .png files. There is no limit to the number of static maps you can upload, therefore you can upload one in each language, for each location.
Schedule: The Schedule Tracks feature allows you to filter your schedule. This means you can create a track for each language. You can also utilize Preset Schedules to provide users with personal schedules based on their language preference.
Twitter: Our Twitter feature allows you to add multiple hashtags and Twitter accounts.
QR Scanner: The QR Scanner feature is for users to scan QR codes that you create therefore these can be tailored by language.
Notifications: The Notifications feature is where notifications and messages are stored on a users device. To tailor notifications by language, you can create Group Notifications and send push notifications to specific users or groups of users.
Duplicate Features:
- Custom List
- Photo Album
- YouTube
- Web View
- Weather
- RSS
- Ticketing
- Folder
- Feedback
- News
- Safety & Emergency
FAQs
Does the language have special characters?
When making content changes, we recommend dragging and dropping your exported template into Google Sheets. Always export in .xls format and open the file to check before uploading.
When using Microsoft Excel, we recommend avoiding the use of a CSV file that contains special characters.
Are you creating a guide in a right-justified language?
Manual edits in Builder will remove the justification. Ensure that you give yourself plenty of time to quality check your content, this will take longer due to translation.