Languages

Your ticket shop can be in seven languages: Dutch, French, English, German, Italian, Bulgarian and Spanish. That applies to your visitors and to your own staff. This article explains what that means in practice, what you have to translate yourself, what is already translated, and why you had better not switch on all seven.

What does "multilingual" mean in practice?

Three things happen when you switch a language on.

1. Your shop gets a button for that language. As soon as you switch on more than one language, a choice appears at the top of your ticket shop for each language you have switched on. Your visitor clicks and the whole page changes over.
2. Every language gets its own address. The language is part of the web address, as a small piece at the front: /nl/... for Dutch, /fr/... for French, and so on. That is deliberate: it means you can share a link to your French-language shop that really does open in French, and a search engine can show your pages separately per language.
3. Your products get an extra field per language. With every product a field appears for the name and the description in that language. Nobody fills those fields in for you.

This is how your visitor sees it: every language you switch on gets its own button at the top of your ticket shop.

What you need beforehand

• The owner role, to choose the organisation's languages.
• The administrator role or higher is enough to fill in translations with your products.
• A list of your product names and descriptions, in every language you want to switch on. This is the real work, not the switching on itself.
• Somebody who really speaks the language. Allow half an hour per language per ten products.

If you come across a technical term you do not know, look in the glossary.

Step 1 — Choosing your languages

Go to Settings → Organisation → Languages. That is the second tab of your organisation settings; see Setting up your organisation. You see two fields.

Languages of your shop. A drop-down list in which you can choose several. Every language you switch on here gets a button in your shop and fields with your products. The name in your default language is required for every product; the other languages you may leave empty.

Default language. One language from that list. This is your fallback, and it does two things: it is the language a visitor gets when we do not know theirs, and it is used on documents for which no language choice has been made.

Note: only switch a language on when you can also maintain it. Every language that is on expects a translated product name and product description. See below what happens when one is missing.

Step 2 — Translating what is yours

The platform translates itself. Your own words you translate yourself. That is the whole dividing line.

What	Where you fill it in	Who translates it
Product name and description	With the product, one field per language — see Products and prices	You
Name and description of an event	With the event, one field per language — see Events	You
Introduction text of your ticket shop	Settings → Organisation → Look and feel	You
Link to your terms	Settings → Organisation → Look and feel — one link for all languages	You: make sure that page covers your languages
Buttons, menus and labels	—	Already translated
Error messages	—	Already translated
The confirmation email and the ticket	—	Already translated
The checkout screen	—	Already translated
Dates, times and amounts	—	Already formatted per language

If you add a language later, the fields for that language appear with your products by themselves. Existing products keep their existing translations; nothing is lost.

If you switch a language off again, the button disappears from your shop, and so do the fields for that language with your products.

What happens if a translation is missing?

Then your shop keeps working, and fills the empty field itself. For a product name or a description it takes the Dutch text, and if there is none, the first language you did fill in. For your introduction text it takes your default language. Your French-speaking visitor then sees a French page with a Dutch product name suddenly sitting in it.

That is uglier than it sounds. Your visitor does not think "a translation is missing there", they think "this shop was not made for me" — and they start to doubt whether they are choosing the right ticket. With a ticket that has a price on it, doubt is expensive.

Hence the rule of this article: do not switch on more languages than you can maintain. Two languages that are filled in fully and correctly sell better than seven languages of which five are half done. You can always add one later, and that is an unhurried moment: you fill in the fields, you switch the language on, done.

How does the system choose your visitor's language?

The web address decides. Every link to your shop has a language at the front:

1. The language in the web address always wins. If your visitor arrives via a link with /fr/ in it, they get French. Full stop. This is why you can safely share a French-language link in a French-speaking group. Note: that also applies to a language you did not switch on. The buttons and texts of Passavo are then in that language, and your own texts fall back as described above.
2. The links you get from Passavo start in your default language. The address in the Sharing your shop block therefore opens in your default language.
3. If someone types your own domain without a language after it, we look at the language of their browser. Every browser sends along which languages its user reads. If we know one of them, we use it; otherwise it becomes Dutch.

And then there is the button at the top of your shop: if your visitor clicks it, they change language and the address changes with it. That choice is in the link itself and not in an invisible memory, so that every page stays shareable in exactly one language.

Per staff member: the language of the back office

Every staff member sets their own language in their profile. That choice applies to the back office and stands entirely apart from the languages of your ticket shop.

You can also switch at the top right of the back office, with the language list next to the circle with your initials. So you can perfectly well have a Dutch-language back office with a French-language shop, or the other way round. A French-speaking volunteer who only scans sets their own language to French and you notice nothing of it.

Dates and amounts

These follow the region of the language, not only the language itself. Dutch uses Belgian conventions, Bulgarian uses Bulgarian ones. That is why a Dutch-language ticket says € 12,50 and not €12.50, and the day comes before the month.

You do not have to do anything for that. It happens everywhere at once: on the screen, on the ticket, in the email and on the invoice.

Bulgarian

Bulgarian is written in Cyrillic. Do not transliterate it into Latin letters, not even "to make it readable" — for a Bulgarian visitor that is precisely what makes it unreadable. So write your product name in Cyrillic, or do not switch the language on.

Commonly made mistakes

• Switching on all seven languages on day one. You then have seven fields per product and five of them stay empty. Start with one or two.
• Switching a language on and forgetting the products. The button is there, the product names are not. First translate your products, then switch the language on.
• Forgetting the intro text. That field is filled in separately per language and sits on a different screen from your products. Anyone who thinks only about the products leaves a Dutch paragraph standing in a French shop here.
• Taking an automatic translation over blindly. For "admission ticket" that goes fine. For "seat at the table, drink included" it goes wrong, and you end up arguing about it at the door.
• Transliterating Bulgarian. See above.
• Choosing the default language on the basis of your own language instead of your audience's. A museum in Brussels with mainly French-speaking visitors had better set French as the default language, even if the committee is Dutch-speaking.

What if …

What if I switch a language on but have not translated anything yet?

Your shop keeps working and fills each empty field with another language, usually Dutch. That looks visibly messy. Better to switch the language on only when your translations are ready — the switching on is ten seconds' work.

What if I switch a language off again?

The button disappears from your shop. An old link with that language in it does keep working: whoever uses it still gets the buttons and texts of Passavo in that language, with your product names in another language. So wherever you can, replace old links with a link in a language that is switched on.

What if my visitor gets the wrong language?

First look at the link they used: the language in the address beats everything else you set. If you share a link in a French-speaking group, use the link with /fr/ in it.

What if I have no translator?

Then do not switch that language on. A Dutch-language shop that is correct is better than a French-language one that is half-hearted. If you have one French-speaking member on your committee, ask them to look it over for one evening — for ten products that is enough.

What if I need an eighth language?

There is not one today. In that case choose the language closest to it for your visitors, and put a sentence in the missing language with the practical information in your intro text. Do let us know as well: we like to know which language somebody is missing.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to switch on all seven languages? No, and you had better not. Only switch on what you can maintain.

Does the system translate my product names automatically? No. Your own words you fill in yourself, per language. The buttons, emails and error messages are already translated.

Can my French-speaking staff member see the back office in French? Yes. They set their own language in their profile; that stands apart from the languages of your shop.

In which language does my visitor get their ticket? At checkout they choose one of your languages in the Language of your tickets field. Their confirmation email and their tickets come in that language.

Which language are my own overviews and reports in? In the language you have chosen in your profile. Amounts and dates follow the region of that language.