Languages and translation

Which languages work

Muhamor is open to people from any country. You can write in any of 31 languages, and readers see your text in theirs:

English, Русский, Українська, Español, Deutsch, Français, Português, Italiano, Polski, Nederlands, Türkçe, العربية, עברית, فارسی, हिन्दी, Bahasa Indonesia, 日本語, 한국어, 简体中文, Tiếng Việt, ไทย, Čeština, Română, Magyar, Svenska, Suomi, Dansk, Norsk, Ελληνικά, Български, Қазақша.

The interface is in English and Russian for now: menus, buttons, help and legal pages. Switch it with the EN / RU buttons in the header or footer. The interface language and the language you read in are separate settings, so you can use the English interface and read everything in Spanish, or the other way round.

Your reading language

Your reading language is the language you want publications and comments in. By default it is the same as the interface.

• Signed in: open Settings and pick a Reading language, or use the Reading switch.
• Guest: use the Reading switch. Your choice is kept in a small cookie on this device and is not linked to you.

You'll find the Reading switch in the header on wide screens (the translate icon), in the menu on phones (under Preferences) and at the bottom of every page.

Anything written in another language is then shown translated into your reading language, with a line such as "Translated from German · Show original". One click brings back the original.

"Written in": the language of your publication

You don't have to say which language you write in: Muhamor detects it from the text. Under the editor you'll see Written in: Español (detected). If it guessed wrong, press Change and pick the right one. For a very short text there isn't enough to go on, so we use your reading language until you write more. Comments are detected the same way, and you can pick the language in the reply box.

Communities accept any of these languages unless a community is set to one language.

How translation works

• Titles are translated into both interface languages as soon as you publish, so feeds in both interfaces are readable straight away.
• Titles in feeds, search and "Read next" are shown in your reading language when a translation exists, with a small "Translated from …" marker. Titles into other reading languages are translated the first time someone needs them and then kept, so a feed may show a few originals for a minute.
• The full text and the comments are translated when you open the publication in another reading language, or when you press Translate. Members can request up to 30 translations a day, guests up to 5.
• Texts longer than 40,000 characters are not machine translated.
• Content of private communities and members-only publications never leaves our servers for translation.

Translation costs money, so each language has a monthly allowance on top of an overall one. If the allowance for your reading language runs out, you'll see "Translation into … is paused until next month" and can still read the original.

Some popular publications get a released translation into an interface language: a checked version that is shown to readers of that interface and can be found by search engines. Machine translations into other languages are shown only to the reader who asked for them and are never published as separate pages.

Spotted a bad translation?

Under the translated text, press Suggest a fix, select the sentence that is wrong and write how it should read. It helps the next reader.