Languages

Travel Orbit can show everything a traveller reads in their own language: trip pages, destinations, the booking site, the traveller portal and the emails they get. Northwilds, for example, writes in English and offers Norwegian and German too.

Choose your languages

Admins choose the languages in Booking settings, under Languages:

• Main language: the language you write everything in first, such as English. Anything that isn't translated yet shows in it.
• Other languages: the languages you translate into, such as Norwegian Bokmål and German. You can choose from English, Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk), Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Polish.

Taking a language away hides it from the booking site and the editors, but its translations are kept. Add the language again and they come back.

Translate a trip

1. Open the trip. Next to its name, the language menu shows your languages and how much of each one is translated, such as Norsk 80%.
2. Choose a language. Every tab of the trip now edits that language's text.
3. Write the translation in each field. The text in your main language is shown under the field and as a placeholder, so you always know what you're translating.
4. Select Save changes.

Everything travellers read can be translated: the name, summary, description, highlights, what's included and not included, image descriptions, each itinerary day's title, text, place to stay and the places, operators and notes of its travel, rooms and packages, extras, booking form questions and their options, cancellation notes and booking terms.

Prices, dates, numbers, countries, images, departures, airport codes and travel times are the same in every language. In another language they're read-only and marked Same in every language. To change them, choose your main language again.

The trip list shows a small flag with the percentage translated for each language, so you can see at a glance which trips still need work.

Translate destinations, guides and places to stay

• Destinations: open a country or continent and choose a language next to its name, as for a trip. The tagline, introduction, travel guide, when to go, entry and visas, vaccines, religion, your own official name and capital, search engine text and image descriptions can all be translated. The built-in facts already come in English, Norwegian and German.
• Guides and places to stay: choose a language at the top of the dialog. A guide's role and about text, and a place's town or area, description and image descriptions, can be translated.
• Travel guarantee: in Booking settings, the guarantee text has a tab for each language.

Machine translation

When machine translation is on, three things help you get started:

• Translate from English (or your main language) next to a field suggests a translation for that field. Change the suggestion right there if you like, then select Use it, or Dismiss it. Formatted text, such as a description, is shown as it will look.
• Translate everything missing in the language menu fills every empty field of the trip or destination at once. Text you already wrote stays as it is.
• Translate everything missing in Booking settings, under Languages, does the same for the whole organisation in one go: every trip, destination, guide and place to stay, and the settings texts travellers read, such as kinds of day, meals and the travel guarantee. Choose a language, such as Norsk, and a progress bar shows how far it has got, such as "12 of 30 done, now Lofoten ridge walk".

Check the text before you publish it, especially names and local words. Nothing is saved until you select Save changes, except Translate everything missing, which saves straight away so you can review it field by field.

Admins choose how Travel Orbit translates in Booking settings, under Languages:

• Machine translation: switch it off to translate everything yourself. The buttons then don't show.
• Translate with: DeepL, or Your AI provider, which uses the key and model from AI writing. When DeepL isn't set up, Travel Orbit uses your AI provider.
• Never translate: words that stay the same in every language, such as Lofoten, Reinebringen, Northwilds or rorbu. Both DeepL and your AI provider keep them exactly as written, and so does AI writing.

If machine translation isn't set up, the language menu says so. You can still translate everything yourself, or write each field in the other language with AI writing.

What travellers see

• Booking site: when you offer more than one language, a language menu appears at the top of your booking pages. The choice is kept in the address, such as /travel/book/northwilds?locale=nb, and remembered for next time. Buttons, labels, dates and prices are shown in that language too. The booking site's own text comes in English, Norwegian and German, and in English for other languages.
• Emails: a booking remembers the language it was made in, and every email to the traveller uses it: confirmations, receipts, payment reminders and cancellations. Their words come in English, Norwegian and German; translate them into other languages under Email templates. See Emails to travellers.
• Traveller portal: shows in the language chosen on the booking site.
• Your own website: the booking API answers in the language you ask for with locale.

Anything not yet translated shows in your main language, so a half-translated trip still makes sense to travellers.