Translate Content in an Email

If you’ve switched to our new email builder, some steps in this article may not apply. To learn how to use the new builder, check out Design an Email with the New Builder.

Use merge tags to provide translated versions of your email content to your contacts. The translation merge tag generates a list of Google Translate links that recipients can click to translate your email into their preferred language. To translate your content for individual contacts, use conditional merge tags to provide manually translated versions of your content to contacts based on your audience's language data.

In this article, you'll learn about these two ways to translate your email.

Things to know

Here are some things you should know about translating content for your contacts.

• Make sure you're familiar with how merge tags work in Mailchimp. To learn more, check out Getting Started with Merge Tags.
• You’ll use conditional merge tags to translate content for individual contacts. To learn more about how these merge tags work, check out our Use Conditional Merge Tags article.
• Users can also translate email content from the email page. Sent emails display the archive bar by default, which includes a Translate tab powered by Google Translate.

Translate for all contacts with links

Use the *|TRANSLATE:XX|* merge tag to generate Google Translate links in your email for supported languages. Contacts can click a link to view your email in their preferred language.

To add Google Translate links to your email, follow these steps.

1. In the Content section of the email checklist, click Edit Design.
   
2. On the Design step, click a text block to edit or drag a new text content block to your layout.
3. Insert *|TRANSLATE:XX|* in the editing pane for your content block.
4. Replace XX with the language code your original content is written in. For example, *|TRANSLATE:en|* tells Google Translate that the content is being translated from English.
5. Click Save & Close.

Preview and test your email to see the *|TRANSLATE:XX|* merge tag before you send your email.

Source language codes

We support the following languages and their language codes.

• English = en
• Arabic = ar
• Afrikaans = af
• Belarusian = be
• Bulgarian = bg
• Catalan = ca
• Chinese = zh
• Croatian = hr
• Czech = cs
• Danish = da
• Dutch = nl
• Estonian = et
• Farsi = fa
• Finnish = fi
• French (France) = fr
• French (Canada) = fr_CA
• German = de
• Greek = el
• Hebrew = he
• Hindi = hi
• Hungarian = hu
• Icelandic = is
• Indonesian = id
• Irish = ga
• Italian = it
• Japanese = ja
• Khmer = km
• Korean = ko
• Latvian = lv
• Lithuanian = lt
• Maltese = mt
• Malay = ms
• Macedonian = mk
• Norwegian = no
• Polish = pl
• Portuguese (Brazil) = pt
• Portuguese (Portugal) = pt_PT
• Romanian = ro
• Russian = ru
• Serbian = sr
• Slovak = sk
• Slovenian = sl
• Spanish (Mexico) = es
• Spanish (Spain) = es_ES
• Swahili = sw
• Swedish = sv
• Tamil = ta
• Thai = th
• Turkish = tr
• Ukrainian = uk
• Vietnamese = vi

Translate for individual contacts

Use conditional merge tag blocks that reference contact language information to display content in each contact's preferred language.

To use this method, you must have language information stored for the contacts in your Mailchimp audience. There are two ways to collect a contact's language information.

• Browser language – If we detect a contact's browser language when they sign up to your audience, update their profile, or click links in your email, we'll add the information to their contact profile. You can also manually change this information on your contact's profile page.
• Audience field – Add a field to your audience and ask contacts to choose their preferred language when they sign up.

In the following section, you'll learn how to use each of these collection methods with conditional merge tags to display content in a contact's preferred language.

Use detected browser language

Use our *|MC_LANGUAGE|* merge tag with conditional merge tags to dynamically display email content to your contacts based on their detected browser language upon sign up.

Manually translate your content for each language you want to provide, and take the following steps to add the conditional merge tag block to your email.

1. In the Content section of the email checklist, click Edit Design.
   
2. On the Design step, click a text block to edit or drag a new text content block to your layout.
3. In the editing pane for your content block, insert the following tag set, and replace the language code and content with your own.
   *|IF:MC_LANGUAGE=es|*
   Spanish content here.
   *|ELSE:|*
   Display English content for everyone else.
   *|END:IF|*
   To provide more than two languages, use the following tag set.
   *|IF:MC_LANGUAGE=es|*
   Spanish content here.
   *|ELSEIF:MC_LANGUAGE=de|*
   German content here.
   *|ELSE:|*
   Display English content for everyone else.
   *|END:IF|*
4. Click Save & Close.

If a contact's language is something other than the translated language, or if they do not have language information, we'll display the content that follows *|ELSE:|*.

Test your merge tags before you send your email to make sure your content displays correctly.

Use language field information

If you created a field in your Mailchimp audience that allows contacts to input their preferred language upon sign up, you can use the data to provide dynamic content.

To add the conditional merge tag block to your email, follow these steps.

1. In the Content section of the email checklist, click Edit Design.
   
2. On the Design step, click to edit or drag a new text content block to your layout.
3. In the editing pane for your content block, insert the following tag set. Replace LANGUAGE with the audience merge tag you created for the language field in your audience, and replace Spanish with the language value from your audience.
   *|IF:LANGUAGE=Spanish|*
   Spanish content here.
   *|ELSE:|*
   English content for everyone else.
   *|END:IF|*
4. Click Save & Close.

If a contact's language is something other than the translated language, or if they do not have language information, we will display the content that follows *|ELSE:|*.

Test your merge tags before you send your email to make sure your content displays correctly.

• If your contacts are in groups based on their preferred language, you can use conditional merge tags with groups to send different content for each group.
• You can also translate your audience's signup form and response emails.
• It's not possible to translate the subject line of your email.