How to translate the welcome book?

Hosting travelers from around the world? Great idea to offer your welcome book in multiple languages! Automatically translate the content of your welcome booklet to provide a smooth and personalized experience for every traveler, regardless of their language.

In this article, we’ll walk you through every step.

Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you:

• Have a Nowistay account (translating the guide does not require a subscription)
• Have at least one property and digital guide already created

Main language and overall functionality

The main language of the booklet is the Primary working language you chose when you created the guide. By default, it is the language of your Nowistay app when that is English, French or Spanish, and English otherwise.

The main language serves as a reference for the content of the booklet: if a page is not translated into the traveler’s language, the content of the main language will be displayed instead.

Choose the language in which your booklet’s content is richest and most detailed as the main language. This version will serve as the basis for learning for the Nowistay AI co-host. Why is this important? The AI co-host relies on the content of your booklet to automatically respond to travelers. It reads the chosen main language, whatever language the guest writes in.

For example, if you want to provide more details in your booklet in French (with more tips, local information, etc.), choose French as the main language. This will enable the AI co-host to provide more accurate and personalized responses.

To change the main language later, follow these steps. A language can only become the main one once its introduction and every page have a title and content.

What your guests see

Guests don’t have to choose anything: the guide opens in the language of their phone or browser when that language is active in your guide, and in the main language otherwise. They can switch to any other active language with the flag menu at the top of the guide.

Adding and activating other languages

9 languages are currently eligible for automatic translation:

• English
• French
• Spanish
• German
• Italian
• Russian
• Dutch
• Chinese
• Portuguese

To activate one or more additional language(s):

• Open your welcome guide
• Click on the flag icon next to the Share button, then click on the Settings link

• Activate the language(s) of your choice with the switches of the Translate window.

• As soon as you switch a language on, Nowistay shows Language activated and offers to translate the guide into it right away: click Translate to do it now, or close the message to do it later.

Once activated, these languages become immediately available:

• In the guide editor
• In the traveler app (via shared link or QR code)

You can then manually translate your guide content, language by language.

How to translate your welcome guide?

There are two ways to start the translation process:

1. The complete translation of your guide into one or more languages. Note: This highly effective method is recommended.
2. Page-by-page translation. Note: This method is recommended when adding or updating content.

1. Full translation of the welcome booklet into a target language

• Go to your welcome booklet
• Click on the flag icon next to the Share button, then on the Automatic translation link (it stays greyed out while the guide has only one active language)

• Select the language(s) into which you want your booklet to be automatically translated in Translate to. Under Pages, every page is ticked: untick the ones you don’t want to translate. Then click on the Translate button.

• And that’s it! A progress window shows each page being translated, usually in a few minutes. Then simply change the language via the flag icon in your guide to check and, if necessary, adjust the translated content for each language.

Good to know:

• The translation always starts from the main language and replaces the title and text of the selected pages in the target languages. Edits you made by hand in those languages are overwritten for those pages.
• Images, videos and tables stay in place in every language; their captions are translated.
• A page that is empty in the main language cannot be selected, and Nowistay warns you that some pages cannot be translated automatically because the primary language content is incomplete.

2. Page-by-page translation of the welcome booklet

This method is preferable when adding content, so as not to overwrite everything.

• Go to your welcome booklet
• Click on the ”…” next to each page, then on “Automatic translation”. The same window opens for this page only: choose the language(s) and click Translate.

Spot the pages that still need a translation

A red dot before a page in the list means it has no title or no content yet in at least one active language. Hover over it to see which languages are missing.

The ”…” menu of a page also offers Import content: choose a language, and the page’s title and content in the language you are editing are replaced by that language’s version, without translating it. Useful to start a page from an existing version and adapt it by hand.

Translating a guide? Here’s what you need to know.

Some tasks handled by the AI, such as translating a guide, may occasionally take more than a minute, especially for complex requests. That’s completely normal and ensures high-quality results. To guide you through the process, we’ve implemented a clear and user-friendly system:

A full-screen window

As soon as the task begins, a modal window appears in the foreground:

• It cannot be closed manually during processing.
• It prevents interaction with the rest of the interface, to avoid errors or accidental interruptions.
• A progress bar lets you track the task in real time, page by page.

What if it takes too long?

As a safety measure, if the translation cannot be completed, the window tells you so:

• A clear error message asks you to try again in 30 minutes.
• Use Close to stay on your guide, or Return to listings. Nothing moves you anywhere automatically.
• If a generation or another translation is already running on the same guide, Nowistay asks you to wait for it to finish first. Only one job runs per guide at a time.