Multi-language system, which languages are mandatory when creating an item?

Question

A company has an administrator (which uses the dashboard), a company also has employees. An administrator can create a set of Categories that have Questions, now I introduced translations into my system, since administrators or employees might speak a different language.

Now I'm wondering, when an administrator creates a new Category or Question, how does he handle the languages/translations?

All possible languages have to be filled when creating a new category or question

This seems odd when the company has only English speaking people, for example

The language the administrator chose in his/her settings is the one that has to be filled in as the initial language

This doesn't make a lot of sense, because employees can still have another language chosen then the administrator

An account has a default language, which is the default for administrators and employees, they can change this of course, but the default is the language that is required to be filled when creating a new category or question

Not sure about this one, it doesn't feel like the perfect solution.

What do you think?

Answer 1

There needs to be a default language set for the project/company, maybe ask during onboarding, how you find out is up to you. Try and avoid using a user's default language choice or location. Just because a user prefers to use the application in french doesn't mean that the company they work for uses french as their default language. Especially now, with the advent of distributed teams.

When creating categories or questions, try to show the default language and add the ability to add language variants.

E.g. (very quick design mockup):

You could also have settings for each company where they set the languages that are required and maybe even the optional languages. But for me on creation of categories/questions is where you should place the variants.