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Translated editions of documents have been a feature of Whitehall for some months now. To date, the only way to have a document in a language other than English was to first have an English document and then create a translated edition.
But now we have released a feature that permits the publishing of Worldwide location news articles without there having to be an English version.
The steps involved are:
Create new Worldwide location news article > Select ‘Designate ‘foreign language only’ document’ > Heed warning > Make document > Save
It is as easy as that. But use sparingly because you can’t add subsequent translations and URLs get a numerical ID rather than a meaningful, human-readable slug.
The product team aren’t keen on this one. Pressures was applied to a replicate a feature of the previous FCO platform but we didn’t think the user need was at all clear. There is definitely a need to translate content but we can’t see why that content shouldn’t also be in English.
We’ll keep a keen eye on its usage and performance.