How to display translated email message content - Ortto Knowledge Base

Overview

This article outlines how to set up and manage email content in multiple languages based on recipient language preference. These instructions apply to single-send campaigns and emails in journeys / playbooks.

Accessing campaign setup

To access the campaign setup go to Marketing > Campaigns > Select your Campaign > Email > Setup.

How to display content in different languages

To display content in different languages, select the option to translate your email in the Setup stage. You can then use merge tags and Liquid syntax to conditionally display the email content in the appropriate language for each recipient.

NOTE: Ortto does not provide automatic translation of your message content. You’ll need to write text in each supported language.

EX: If your campaign includes both English and Spanish, you'll need to draft the subject line and message content in both languages. Use conditions around each language's content to ensure that English readers see the English text and Spanish readers see the Spanish text.

Ways to set language conditions

There are several ways you can set language conditions, these include:

Add in-line conditions to text boxes.
Frame media, such as images, with conditions.
Set conditional formatting for entire rows.

In-line text box conditions

In the text boxes, set conditions to display content based on each user’s preferred language. You can combine all language-specific conditions and text within a single text box if, for example, you’d like to provide greetings in multiple languages.

Example showing a combination of language specific conditions in a single text block.

Frame media with conditions

You can use liquid syntax in text boxes to display different content based on language preferences.

EX: If your campaign includes Spanish translations, you can set it up so English readers see one image, while Spanish recipients see another, as shown in the example below.

Example showing different image for English / Spanish recipients.

Set conditional formatting for rows

To set conditions for an entire row, click the relevant row, then go to the Rows settings on the right and select Add condition. You can then enter a name, description, and your preferred language conditions, then click Confirm. Now, only recipients with the specified language preference will see this row.

Screenshot showing where to add a condition for the row.

Example display condition for a row which will show to Spanish recipients.

Some other useful operators for display conditions are or and contains.

EX: {% if people.language == 'en-us' or people.language == 'en-gb' %} This content will display for all English (US and UK) recipients {% elsif people.language == 'es' %} This content will show for Spanish recipients {% endif %}

Learn more about translating campaign content with liquid.

Supported languages

The values for the languages Ortto currently supports for translation are:

Chinese (simplified) — zh-cn
Chinese (traditional) — zh-tw
Czech - cs
Danish — da
Dutch — nl
English (UK) — en-gb
English (US) — en-us
Estonian - et
Finnish — fi
French — fr
German — de
Greek — el
Hungarian - hu
Icelandic — is
Indonesian - id
Italian — it
Japanese - ja
Korean - ko
Korean (North) - ko-kp
Korean (South) - ko-kr
Lithuanian - lt
Norwegian — no
Polish — pl
Portuguese — pt
Portuguese (Brazilian) - pt-br
Romanian - ro
Russian — ru
Spanish — es
Swedish — sv
Ukrainian — uk

What language will a recipient see?

Message content will only be shown to recipients in their preferred language if you use merge tags and liquid syntax to conditionally show the content in the specified language. Otherwise, if a recipient’s language preference isn’t set or isn’t supported in your email, they will see the default language which you have set under Settings > General > Language > Default. Any text not contained within language conditions will appear as written to all recipients.

Footer links will automatically display in any languages supported by the campaign. For example, if you support English (US) and Spanish, recipients with Spanish as their preferred language will see Spanish footer links; others will see them in English (US).

How Ortto handles missing and unsupported languages

1. When a person has no language specified

If a person does not have a language set on their profile:

Liquid language conditions are evaluated as though the person's language matches the account’s default language.
The same behavior applies to public pages, such as:
- Forward to a Friend
- Unsubscribe
- Opt-in Confirmation
- Any similar system-generated pages

When a person's language is undefined, Ortto defaults entirely to the account's default language.

2. When a person has a language that is not supported

If a person has a language specified, but that exact language is not supported in the email or public pages:

Email Content

Liquid conditions evaluate against the person's exact language value. If the email is built using different supported language codes, the person's language will not match, even if it is similar.

EXAMPLE: Person's language is Chinese (Singapore) and the supported language is Chinese (Simplified), these will not match.

As a result, the person will fall into the else condition (if one is provided), or all language-specific content will be skipped.

The system does not attempt to partially match or approximate similar language variants in emails.

Public Pages (Unsubscribe, etc.)

For system-generated public pages:

The system will attempt to match the base language (e.g., “Chinese”) if available.
If no suitable base language exists, the page will fall back to the account’s default language.