Overview
AI Translations is moving to general availability in Higher Logic Vanilla as part of the Release 009 rollout. This release makes it easier for multilingual communities to reduce language barriers, support global participation, and help members engage with community content in their preferred language.
Schedule
- Staging: Week of June 1
- Production: Week of June 8
- Enterprise: Week of June 15
AI Translations for Multilingual Communities
AI Translations helps communities make content more accessible across languages by allowing members to read and engage with community content in their preferred language.
This is especially useful for global communities, international associations, regional customer bases, partner ecosystems, and support communities where members may participate across multiple languages.
With AI Translations, communities can create a more inclusive experience while helping valuable content reach more people across regions.
Admin Controls for Translation Settings
Admins have control over how AI Translations is configured for their community.
Depending on your community configuration and plan availability, admins can manage available languages, language ordering, custom term translations, words or phrases that should not be translated, and advanced prompts that help guide translation behavior.
AI Translations also supports localized experiences for email digest intro and footer content, notification footer content, language-specific themes, and subcommunity-specific language experiences:
These controls help communities tailor translations to their audience, terminology, brand, and regional needs.
Custom Term Translations and Ignore List
AI Translations includes tools to help admins control how important words and phrases are handled during translation.
In some communities, there may be brand names, product names, acronyms, internal terminology, or community-specific language that should not be translated automatically. There may also be terms that should be translated, but only using specific approved wording.
Admins can manage these options from Settings → Language Settings.
Ignore List
The Ignore List is used for words or phrases that should not be translated at all.
This is useful for terms like:
- Brand names
- Product names
- Acronyms
- Internal terminology
- Words that should stay exactly the same in every language
For example, a community might add terms like:
vanilla; Higher Logic; API
Any terms added to the Ignore List will be skipped during translation.
Custom Term Translations
Custom Term Translations are used when a term should be translated, but the community wants to control the exact translation that appears.
This is especially helpful for:
- Industry-specific terminology
- Community-specific language
- Product or feature names that should be translated in a specific way
- Preferred wording that should override the automatic translation
Admins can add a source term in the community’s default language, then provide a custom translation for each target language.
If a custom translation is not provided for a specific language, AI Translations will continue using the automatic translation by default. This allows communities to customize only the languages or terms that need special handling while still letting AI Translations handle the rest.
As a quick rule of thumb:
- Use the Ignore List when a term should never be translated.
- Use Custom Term Translations when a term should be translated, but the community wants to decide exactly how it appears.
These settings give communities more control over translated content and help keep important terminology consistent across languages.
Language-Based Style Guides and Theming
AI Translations also supports more flexible multilingual theming with language-based style guides.
With this release, communities can apply different style guides by AI-translated language. This gives admins more control over the look, feel, and navigation members see when browsing the community in their selected language.
Language-based style guides can be used with or without subcommunities. Whether your community uses one main experience with multiple languages, or separate subcommunities for different audiences, regions, or language groups, you can create or copy a theme and apply it to a specific language experience.
This is especially helpful when communities want to keep branding consistent while localizing key parts of the user experience, such as:
- Banner imagery
- Header links
- Footer links
- Title bar navigation
- Quicklinks
- Legal links
- Support, documentation, or regional resources
- Calls to action or welcome messaging
One common use case is localized navigation. For example, instead of only translating a footer link from “Privacy Policy” to “Politique de confidentialité” while keeping the same English URL, you can point that link to the correct French privacy policy page.
For communities using subcommunities, language-based theme assignments are managed in the subcommunity settings. Admins can assign a different theme to each AI Translation language enabled for that subcommunity, such as using the default theme for English and a French-specific theme for French.
This gives communities the flexibility to make each language experience as similar or as tailored as needed, from small updates to links and labels all the way to more regionally specific banners, navigation, and resources.
Different themes per language:
English:
French:
Theme by language (no subcommunities):
Subcommunity settings:
User AI Preferences
AI Translations includes individual user-level AI preferences.
Members can manage whether AI tools may process their content, including whether they participate in AI-powered translations. By default, users are opted in, but they can choose to opt out at any time.
When a user opts out of AI Translations, some content may not be translated. In those cases, the interface may indicate that content is not translated.
Supported Languages
AI Translations supports a broad set of languages, including French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Danish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Polish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and many more.
View the full supported language list here:
https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/1893-ai-translation#supported-languages
Availability
AI Translations availability depends on your plan level.
Additional languages may be available for purchase above the number included in your plan. Your community’s default language counts toward the total number of AI languages included in your plan.
To confirm whether AI Translations is included in your plan, how many languages are available to your community, or whether additional languages can be added, please contact your CSM or Renewal Manager.
Historical Content Translation
AI Translations applies to new or edited content by default.
Translation of historical content may be available as an additional scoped service depending on the size of your community, the amount of content to translate, and the languages required. To request an estimate, please contact your CSM or Vanilla Support.
Translation Quality and Appropriate Use
AI Translations improves multilingual access and engagement within the community platform. As with any AI-generated translation, translation quality may vary by language, content type, and subject matter.
AI-generated translations should not be treated as a replacement for human translation in legal, medical, regulated, or highly sensitive contexts.
Customer content is not used to train AI models.
Learn More
Learn more about AI Translations here:
https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/1893-ai-translation
We’re excited to make multilingual community experiences easier, more accessible, and more discoverable across Higher Logic Vanilla.
Analytics: New “Likely Automated” Traffic Type Filter
We’ve added a new Likely Automated traffic type to Analytics.
This new traffic type helps identify activity that appears automated but does not match a known bot operator. It is now available as a filter option in Analytics dashboards alongside other traffic types such as search engine crawlers, AI crawlers, archivers, AI assistants, and human users.
Traffic with a low bot score is now classified as Likely Automated, and Vanilla will also store the bot score for future reference.
This update improves visibility into non-human traffic patterns and helps community teams better understand how automated activity may be influencing analytics data.