Languages on the booking site
Supported languages
The booking site is available in: Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (international, British and American), French, Hebrew, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish.
The language setting also controls locale details such as date format and 12 or 24-hour clock (choose English American for a 12-hour clock).
If your language is missing, contact us. Our translations are open source at https://github.com/makeplans/makeplans-i18n , and we can add a new booking site language if you help us with the translation.
Changing the language
There are two separate language settings:
- Account language: used in the administration system. Change it under Setup > Account.
- Booking site language: what your customers see. By default it follows the account language, but you can set a different one under Setup > Booking site. For example, you can run the admin system in English while customers see the booking site in Spanish.
Note that the admin system itself is available in fewer languages than the booking site. It is translated to Danish, English, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Lithuanian, Latvian, Malay, Norwegian, Russian and Swedish; the remaining languages apply to the booking site only.
Offering multiple languages on one booking site
You can offer several languages on the same booking site so the customer chooses their preferred language:
- A language menu is shown at the bottom of the booking site.
- Optionally, the language can be set automatically based on the customer's browser language.
- A logged-in customer's language choice is saved on their profile and used on later visits.
- You can also link directly to a specific language from your website, for example add ?locale=en for English or ?locale=nb for Norwegian to your booking site address. If you have separate language versions of your website, we recommend linking each one directly to the matching booking site language.
This feature is currently enabled manually by us. Contact support and tell us which languages you want in the menu and whether you want automatic browser-based language detection.
What is translated, and what is not
Multiple languages apply to MakePlans' standard texts only. Content you enter yourself, such as service names, category names, descriptions, custom texts and custom form fields, is shown as you wrote it and is not translated automatically. If you use a custom form, it is possible to show different field labels per language, but it requires extra code. See custom forms localisation: https://github.com/makeplans/makeplans-custom-forms#localisation-i18n
Language of email and SMS notifications
Standard confirmation, reminder and cancellation messages to customers are part of our translations and follow the booking site's default language. Note that this also applies when the multi-language menu is enabled: messages are sent in the default language, not the individual customer's chosen language. Custom message content that you write yourself is likewise sent as written, in one language. Supporting multiple languages in custom texts and custom SMS is possible but requires some manual setup, so contact us and we will help.