Translations

Auto-translate your content into multiple languages using GitBook’s AI Agent and keep it synced

Only organization admins can create and access translations, as it’s a billable feature.

Auto translations make it easy to keep your documentation up-to-date in multiple languages, with minimal manual effort. You can create a section as a translation of another, and let GitBook Agent handle the rest.

How translations work

• Create a translation section: Set up a new section as a translation of an existing one. Choose your source section and target language.

• Continuous updates: Every time you make changes to the source content, the translation workflow only runs for the pages that have been changed.

• Automatic sync: After changes are merged, the translation workflow runs automatically and syncs with its source, so your translated section always reflects the latest updates.

Page slugs in auto-translated sections may change unless the page has a fixed slug. To keep URLs stable across languages, set a fixed slug before translating. To update a slug, see How can I change the slug in the URL?

Set up an auto translation

To translate a section to a new language, go back to your organization Home and click Translations in the sidebar, then click Create translation.

In the Create translation modal, choose a:

• Source — the section you want to translate

• From language

• To language

Click Create to start the translation workflow. These options will be used to translate your section into a duplicated, translated section in your organization.

The Translations screen also lists your configured translation workflows, including their status, source, runs, and translated pages and words. Workflows re-run every time the source content is updated.

Advanced configuration

Click Show advanced instructions in the Create translation modal to configure these options.

Custom AI instructions: Add advanced instructions to guide the AI on tone of voice, style, or other preferences. This helps ensure your translations match your brand or audience.

Adding custom instructions to your translation workflow can be helpful, but is limited in certain cases.

Custom instructions cannot be used to create new elements on a translated section, add extra text, or change the structure of the source content.

Glossary support: Define a glossary to control how specific terms are translated. This keeps terminology consistent across all supported languages.

Your glossary terms must match the source-language wording you want to control. GitBook applies them during translation runs to keep terminology consistent.

For example, if your source language is English and your glossary includes SSO → SSO and Git Sync → Git Sync, a sentence like “Set up SSO with Git Sync” keeps those terms unchanged in the translated output.

Changing your glossary will trigger a full re-translation of your content. There is currently no workaround: we cannot reliably detect which pages might contain a glossary keyword, so the safest approach is to re-translate all pages. Updating the glossary may therefore be time- and cost-intensive.

Add a translation to a variant

After creating a translation, you’ll be able to add it to published docs site as a variant. This will allow users to toggle between languages in the upper right corner when viewing your main docs site.

To provide the best experience for your users, you’re able to set the default language of a variant when setting it in your settings.

It’s best practice to add the language of your translated section when setting up your variant.

To set up a new variant for a translation, open the structure editor from Site structure in the site sidebar.

Pricing

Translations are a paid add-on. We bill translations on the same monthly or annual cycle as your main subscription.

• Monthly rate: $25 per month for up to 50,000 translated words each month

• Annual rate: $250 per year for up to 50,000 translated words each month

• $0.20 per additional 1,000 words

The monthly allowance resets at the start of each month. The $0.20 rate applies to every additional 1,000 words, including on annual subscriptions.

“Monthly” describes the rate and word allowance. It doesn't describe the billing cycle.

In your first translation, every word will count towards your bill. After that, only pages with new or updated words are charged. For example, if you edit your docs later, only the pages with new words will count towards your word limit — you won’t be re-billed for the entire document.

Be cautious when working on multiple translations with large pages, as translated word count includes all words within a page that contains a change — meaning if only a few words are changed in a large page, the entire page will be re-translated.

FAQ

Why use auto-translations?

• Effortless multilingual docs: Reach a global audience without manual translation work.

• Smart updates: Only changed pages are re-translated, saving time and resources.

• Full control: Customize translations with advanced instructions and glossary management.

Can I edit the translation?

You currently can't edit translations.

As translations are done as a pure transformation of the source content, we can't reconcile potential edits made on the translation result with a new translation.

To workaround it, we recommend the following flow:

• Use the glossary to define specific translations that you want the AI to use

• Use the custom instructions to iterate on the output

How many translations do I need to create?

You should only create one translation workflow per language of any given source content. Creating multiple workflows will accrue extra, duplicated costs in your organization.

What are some current limitations?

• Translations do not localize UI elements in your variant automatically. Open Customize in the site sidebar to localize the interface for a specific variant.

  • This includes user-input customizations, such as announcement banners.

• Translations cannot add extra content to the page - like a hint or a banner noting that a page was translated by AI. Consider adding an extra page in the translated section to note this, or the announcement banner in your site variant.

• Changing the glossary triggers a full re-translation of all pages, which can increase processing time and cost. There is no partial re-translation based on glossary usage at this time.

If you need help getting started or want to learn more about configuring auto-translations, contact our support team.