Multilingual E-Mail templates

Status: Requested 11 Votes
Marc M
Jul 8, 2019 4:57 PM
Joined May, 2019 1 post

Am I just blind or is this not implemented (yet)?
I have my website localized in English and German, also the inquiry form works in both languages, but I am quite sure that German guests will except email conversation in German, especially when the send their inquiry using a German form.
So how can I make a set of German templates?

Chris Hynes
Jul 9, 2019 7:29 AM
OR Team Member Joined Oct, 2012 1401 posts

Currently we don't have the option to tag a guest with a language, or vary up email templates based on guest language.

We do have several multilingual accounts and what they do is to include both English and the other language in their templates.

Chuck K
Apr 10, 2020 12:51 PM
Joined Oct, 2019 86 posts

If OR could add the ability to Trigger a message based on the contents of a Custom Field, that could work.

I am trying to reduce the size of our emails to just essentials and really don't want to include multiple languages in one message, except in 1 or 2 of the initial messages letting them know it is an option.

We saw a big uptick last year in bookings from people who spoke Spanish, but very limited English. Communication in those cases was severely lacking and we need to improve that. At the moment, we do it manually, which is not ideal.

We have Spanish versions of all of our message content so if I could add a criteria to a Trigger, I could duplicate triggers 1 for English and 1 for Spanish.

IF [CUSTOM FIELD] contains " " (something like if BXLANG contains SP)

Without knowing the underlying architecture, even a Boolean would be okay as it would give us an option for 1 alternate language. That would be an improvement.

Le Touquet Holid
May 11, 2021 7:49 PM
Joined Nov, 2018 113 posts

Any update on implementing a language tag or field we can use in templates?
It just seems like this could be an easy win, with a minimal code update.
Sending lengthy multilingual templates often results in them not being read.

Ken T
May 11, 2021 9:30 PM
Joined Aug, 2019 1706 posts

We now have Tags in general:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/tags

We don't supply you with any tags in particular, but you can certainly create tags for all the various languages you support. Then, you can set up duplicate sets of email templates in each language, using triggers to send them if a given guest or property has a particular language tag (or not).

It's not perfect, but should mostly meet the need for now until we have full multi-language capability.

Le Touquet Holid
May 12, 2021 4:23 AM
Joined Nov, 2018 113 posts

Thanks Ken. Ideally I,m trying to automate this without manually adding tags. All it would need would be to make the country database field available to the triggers. Or maybe a language field.

Ken T
May 12, 2021 9:23 AM
Joined Aug, 2019 1706 posts

Unfortunately, you would have to manually add tags anyway, as we don't have an automatic means of determining what language a given guest wants to use.

Le Touquet Holid
May 12, 2021 9:46 AM
Joined Nov, 2018 113 posts

True but if a guest gives an address in a particular country then it would be reasonable to assume they speak that language. Not perfect but it's going to be right around 95% of the time. Time well worth saving.