How to translate a Freshdesk knowledge base

Freshdesk can hold a translated version of every solution article, but it doesn't translate them for you: you write each translation by hand, paste in machine translation, or connect a translation app. The harder part comes later, because Freshdesk doesn't notice when a primary article changes; you mark its translations outdated yourself, every time.

What Freshdesk does natively

• Multilingual knowledge base is a Pro and Enterprise feature. Each article gets a version per language, with its own title, body and SEO fields. Growth plans have one language.
• No automatic translation of articles. A Freshworks community manager wrote on 31 March 2025: "Freshdesk currently does not have a built-in feature to automatically translate knowledge base articles." Freddy's translation features translate tickets and replies, not solution articles.
• A manual "outdated" flag. When you edit a primary article, you open it and click Mark other translations as outdated. Freshdesk's own documentation: "You perform this action each time you update the primary article." Translations show as outdated, up to date or untranslated.

Checked 2026-09-19 · Managing a multilingual knowledge base using article status · Knowledge base feature table · community thread, 31 Mar 2025

Turn on languages in Freshdesk

1. 01

   Check your plan

   Multilingual knowledge base needs Freshdesk Pro or Enterprise (or the Omni/Omnichannel equivalents).
2. 02

   Add the languages

   In Admin, under the helpdesk settings for languages, keep your primary language and add the supported languages your customers need. The portal gets a language switcher.
3. 03

   Translate the most viewed articles first

   Open a primary article, pick a language in the Languages pane and add the translation. Start with the 20 articles that get the most views; the long tail can wait.
4. 04

   Translate the SEO fields too

   Each language has its own meta title and description. Leave them empty and search engines show the primary language snippet.
5. 05

   Agree how you will keep them in sync

   Decide who marks translations outdated after an edit, and who re-translates them. Without an owner, this is the step that stops happening.

Option 1: translate by hand or with DeepL

Copy the article body into DeepL, Google Translate or a similar tool, paste the result into the Freshdesk translation and have a fluent reader check it. It costs nothing but time and works for a few dozen articles.

What goes wrong: formatting and links. Paste rich text and you may lose links and styling in the editor (a common complaint on the Freshworks community); paste HTML in source view and the tool may translate attribute values or break tags. Product names get translated inconsistently unless you keep a glossary of terms that must not change.

Option 2: a translation management system (TMS) app

A TMS pulls your articles into its own editor, where translators, machine translation and translation memory work on them, then pushes the translations back to Freshdesk.

Checked 2026-09-19 · Lokalise Freshdesk docs · Lokalise pricing (checked 2026-09-18) · Crowdin app listing (checked 2026-09-18) · Lingpad listing

A TMS is the right tool when you already have a localization team, translators and a process. For a support lead with a few hundred articles, it is a second system to learn and pay for, and its vocabulary (projects, keys, hosted words) is built for software strings.

Option 3: a website translation overlay

Tools like Weglot or ConveyThis translate your help-center pages as they are served, in front of Freshdesk. Setup takes minutes and Weglot has a free tier (2,000 words, one language) with paid plans from $17/mo (checked 2026-09-18, pricing).

The catch: the translations never become Freshdesk articles. Freshdesk search, the help widget and Freddy AI only see the primary language, so a German customer asking Freddy gets an English answer, or none. You also can't review or edit a translation inside Freshdesk.

The part everyone forgets: keeping translations in sync

Translating a knowledge base once is a project. Keeping it translated is a routine, and the routine is where multilingual help centers fail. Every edit to a primary article needs four things to happen:

1. Someone marks the translations outdated in Freshdesk (the manual step above).
2. Someone notices which translations are outdated. Freshdesk lists them, but nobody gets told.
3. Only the changed part is re-translated, with the same terms as before.
4. A fluent reader checks the draft and publishes it.

Skip step 1 once and the German article silently falls behind. Freddy then answers German customers from the old text. A simple safeguard: a weekly list of translations older than their primary article, compared by modified date, reviewed by the article owner.

Freshdesk and Freddy are trademarks of Freshworks Inc. Lokalise, Crowdin, Lingpad, Localize, DeepL, Weglot and ConveyThis are trademarks of their owners. TidyKB is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by any company named on this page.