Working in multiple languages
The platform separates the language of the user interface from the languages of your content — so a French-speaking analyst can read the UI in French while maintaining process content in English and German.
Overview
Three layers work together:
- UI language — the language of menus, buttons, and notification emails. Each user picks it in My Profile from the set iGrafx ships with the product; see Supported languages below for that set. New users may be prompted to pick their UI language at first sign-in (an administrator setting), and the choices are always this built-in set, not the repository's content languages.
- Content languages — the languages a repository stores content in: object names, summaries and purposes, and diagram text. A repository administrator adds languages and sets the main language; the main language is the fallback when a translation is missing. Once a repository has more than one language, users choose what they view through Change Language in the user menu.
- Translations — the actual translated text, maintained in two places: object translations in the View Languages grid, and diagram translations through the diagram's export and import. Both let you export the text as a spreadsheet and re-import it once it's translated — useful for handing off to external translators.
Missing translations never block reading: text falls back to the repository's main language, then to the language it was originally written in.
A new, empty repository starts with a single content language, set by a repository administrator under Repository → Languages. The cloud demo repository is the exception: it ships with several content languages so you can see how translation works. If your organization works in one language, have a repository administrator remove the ones you don't need early — while extra languages are present, anyone can create objects in them, leaving content stranded in a language no one maintains.
The language flag on a text field
Wherever you edit translatable text — an object's name, its summary or purpose, diagram shape textShape text The text displayed on a diagram shape. Type while a shape is selected to add or edit it. Part of the shape feature family alongside Shape Links and Shape Properties., headers and footers, path names, dashboardDashboard A configurable view in Process360 Live that aggregates KPIs, charts, and filters across one or more processes for stakeholders to monitor performance. gadget titles — a small flag sits beside the field, showing the language you're editing in. Its label is Change language.
Click the flag to open the list of every content language the repository has, and pick the one to edit. A small grey triangle in the corner of a language's flag means that language already holds text of its own for this field. A language without the triangle holds no text of its own, so the field shows the fallback instead — the repository's main language, or the language the text was first written in.
Two things follow from how the source language works:
- An object always has a name. The language a name is first created in becomes that object's source language, and the name can't be emptied there — clearing it leaves the existing name in place. Clearing the name in any other language is allowed; that language then falls back.
- The source language is fixed. It's recorded when the text is first created. You can add translations in the other content languages, but nothing in the product changes the source language afterwards.
Supported languages
iGrafx ships translations for these surfaces: the platform UI and notifications, the Cloud Info Center, the desktop client, product documentation, and iGrafx University. The content languages a repository can store aren't limited to this list.
| Language | UI & notifications (Cloud) | UI & notifications (On‑prem) | Cloud Info Center | Desktop client | Documentation | University |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| English | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| German | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ ¹ | ✅ ¹ |
| Japanese | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ ¹ | ✅ ¹ |
| French | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | — | ✅ ¹ |
| Italian | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | — | — |
| Spanish | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | — | — |
| Chinese | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | — | — |
| Polish | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | — | — |
| Arabic | ✅ ² | ✅ ² | — | — | — | — |
| Croatian | ✅ | ✅ | — | — | — | — |
| Czech | ✅ | ✅ | — | — | — | — |
| Hungarian | ✅ | ✅ | — | — | — | — |
| Lithuanian | ✅ | ✅ | — | — | — | — |
| Portuguese | ✅ | ✅ | — | — | — | — |
| Romanian | ✅ | ✅ | — | — | — | — |
| Swedish | ✅ | ✅ | — | — | — | — |
| Turkish | ✅ | ✅ | — | — | — | — |
¹ A limited selection of translated product documents. ² Right-to-left text justification is not fully supported for Arabic.
Related tasks & references
- Configure repository languages — repository administrators
- Translate objects
- Translate diagram content
- My Profile — your UI and content language