How to Translate Your Documentation into Multiple Languages with DocStar

With DocStar, you can publish your documentation in up to ten languages without writing a single translation by hand: you write in English, turn on the languages you want, and DocStar uses AI to translate every published page, with a language menu for readers and clean language-coded URLs. This guide shows why multilingual docs matter and how to set them up in DocStar step by step.

Most SaaS products sell to more countries than their docs speak to. That gap shows up in a few predictable places:

• Support tickets. Customers who can't read the docs comfortably ask your team instead.

• Onboarding. A new user stuck on a setup page in their second language is more likely to give up.

• Search. People search in their own language. English-only docs don't show up for those searches.

• Sales. "Do you have docs in Japanese/Spanish/German?" is a real question in deals outside English-speaking markets.

The usual answer is a translation project: export the content, send it to translators or a localization tool, import it back, and repeat every time a page changes. Most teams give up after the first round, and the translated docs drift out of date.

DocStar takes a different approach. Translation is a setting on your docs collection, not a separate project.

Here is the model in one paragraph: English is your source language. You write and edit pages in English as usual. When you publish, DocStar translates the page into every language you've turned on for that collection. Translations cover the page title and content, plus meta details like the description and tags, so translated pages are ready for search too.

A few rules keep this predictable:

• Only published content is translated. Drafts and unpublished pages are never sent for translation, so nothing half-written leaks into another language.

• New pages are translated when you publish them, whether you publish one page or bulk publish many.

• Turning on a language translates everything already live. It runs in the background and can take up to 24 hours.

You can add any of these languages to a DocStar collection:

Together with English, that's ten languages for your readers.

Translation works on published content, so start by publishing the pages that matter most: getting started, key how-tos, your API overview. Saving the language settings later translates everything that's already live in one go. See Publish Pages.

Open your collection and click Settings in the left sidebar, then open the Localization tab.

[Screenshot: DocStar collection Settings with the Localization tab open]

Under Available Languages, pick one or more languages. Start with the markets where you already have customers or support volume.

Under Content Generation Targeting, you can choose a country for each language, for example Portuguese for Brazil. The AI then uses that region's wording. Leave it on Default (Global) for a neutral translation.

This matters more than it sounds. Product terms, spelling and tone differ between regions, and readers notice.

Click Save Settings. DocStar starts translating all published pages in the collection in the background. This can take up to 24 hours. You keep working as normal in the meantime.

AI translation is fast, but review the pages that matter most, especially product names and technical terms. Open the translated versions on your live site and check them, the same way you'd review any page before telling customers about it.

Once translations are live:

• A language menu appears on pages that have translations, so readers can switch language.

• Language-coded URLs. Translated pages have the language code at the start of the path, for example /hi/getting-started on your custom domain. Clean, predictable URLs are easy to share and easy for search engines to understand.

• A safe fallback. If a page has no translation in the chosen language yet, readers are sent to the English page instead of a dead end.

[Screenshot: Published DocStar page with the language menu open]

Translated pages only help with search if search engines can find them. In DocStar, the key step is a custom domain: use one to get translated pages into search results. You can serve docs on a subdomain like docs.yourdomain.com or under a path like yourdomain.com/help.

On a custom domain, DocStar also handles the rest of the SEO basics for you: a sitemap.xml that updates as you publish, robots.txt, llms.txt for AI assistants, and a Markdown copy of every page. Read more in SEO, Sitemap and llms.txt and Is Your Documentation Readable by AI?.

Docs change every release, so it's worth knowing how updates flow through:

• New pages: translated automatically when you publish them.

• Edited pages: existing translations may not refresh on republish. Once a page has a translation in a language, publishing the page again may not replace it. After a big edit, open the translated page and check it.

• Removing a language: go back to Settings → Localization, remove the language from Available Languages and click Save Settings. Pages you publish after that are no longer translated into it.

A simple habit works well: when you ship a major change to a key page, add "check translations" to your release checklist. Pair it with a changelog entry so readers in every market know what changed.

Multilingual support isn't only for help docs and API references. DocStar blogs can be published in more than one language with the same Localization settings, so product announcements and tutorials can reach the same audiences as your docs. See Blogs.

If you manage collections programmatically, languages are part of the collection's settings. When you create a collection with the DocStar API, you can pass docProperties with a languages list, for example {"languages": ["hi", "fr"]}, to turn on AI translations. Full reference at developers.docstar.io, and more on automation in Make Your Docs Part of Your Stack.

• Write clear English. Short sentences and consistent terms translate better than clever phrasing.

• Use the same name for the same thing. If it's a "workspace" on one page, don't call it a "project" on the next.

• Keep code, commands and field names in code formatting. It signals which parts are literal.

• Publish core pages before adding languages, so the first translation run covers what readers need most.

• Pick regional targeting where it matters, such as Portuguese for Brazil.

• Review high-traffic pages after the first run and after big edits.

• Translation is a setting, not a project. Turn on languages once; publishing does the rest.

• Ten languages, including regional wording through Content Generation Targeting.

• Safe by design. Only published pages are translated, and readers fall back to English when a translation isn't ready.

• SEO-ready. Language-coded URLs on your custom domain, translated titles and meta, sitemap and llms.txt included.

• One workspace for everything. API docs, help docs, FAQs, changelog and blog live together under your own domain and branding. See Your Docs, Your Brand.

• AI that helps across the board. Translation sits alongside AI drafting, FAQs, changelogs and SEO meta. See Write Less, Ship More.

Hindi, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese and Russian, with English as the source language.

Yes. English is the source language in DocStar. Write and edit your pages in English, and DocStar translates them into the languages you turn on.

When you turn on a language, DocStar translates all published pages in the background, which can take up to 24 hours. New pages are translated when you publish them.

No. Only published content is translated. Drafts and unpublished pages are never sent for translation.

Use a custom domain to get translated pages into search results. Translated pages get language-coded URLs like /hi/getting-started, and translations include the meta description and tags.

Your product already works worldwide. Your docs can too. Create a DocStar collection, publish your core pages, and turn on the languages your customers speak.

Get started free