Simplifying Multilingual Websites with AI-Powered Site Translation in SitecoreAI

Managing multilingual websites has always been one of the biggest challenges for enterprise content teams. Translating thousands of pages, maintaining language consistency, and coordinating localization workflows often require significant time and effort.

To simplify this process, SitecoreAI now offers full-site AI translation capabilities that allow organizations to translate an entire website — including content items and pages — with just a few clicks.

This feature helps teams accelerate localization, reduce manual translation work, and scale global digital experiences more efficiently.

What Is AI-Powered Site Translation?

SitecoreAI enables users to automatically generate translated versions of website content for supported languages directly within the platform.

Instead of manually translating every page or content item, the AI engine creates language versions automatically using the selected source language as the reference.

For example:

• If your website’s primary language is English
• And you want to launch a French version

SitecoreAI can automatically generate translated French versions of your existing content across the site.

This significantly reduces the time required to localize enterprise websites.

Who Can Access the Feature?

The full-site AI translation capability is available for users with:

• Admin roles
• Sitecore Client Site Managing roles

However, translation permissions still follow Sitecore security rules.

If a Sitecore Client Site Manager does not have:

• Write access
• Language write permissions

for certain items, those items will automatically be skipped during the translation process.

This ensures content governance and permission structures remain intact.

How the Translation Process Works

The workflow is designed to be simple and user-friendly.

Step 1: Open the Site Dashboard

Inside the Channels section, users can open the Dashboard for the desired site.

The translation tools are available through the Localization widget or the Localization tab.

Step 2: Choose the Target Language

Users select the language they want the site translated into.

The Localization section also provides visibility into:

• Supported site languages
• Translation progress percentage
• Number of untranslated items and pages

This gives content teams a centralized view of localization progress.

Step 3: Select the Source Language

Before starting the translation, users choose the source language that will act as the original content version.

In most cases, organizations select the language containing the largest amount of content.

However, SitecoreAI also allows teams to choose a linguistically similar language if it improves translation quality.

For example:

• Spanish → Portuguese
• German → Dutch

This flexibility can improve AI-generated translation accuracy.

Step 4: Start the AI Translation

Once configured, users simply click Translate.

By default, SitecoreAI only translates content items that do not already have a language version.

For example:

• If 20% of the website is already translated
• Only the remaining 80% will be processed

This helps avoid duplicate localization efforts.

However, users can also enable the option:

“Add AI translated version even if a language version already exists.”

This creates fresh AI-generated versions for all items, including previously translated content.

What Content Gets Translated?

Not every field in Sitecore is processed during AI translation.

Included Field Types

SitecoreAI translates Versioned and Unversioned fields such as:

• Single-line text
• Multi-line text
• Rich text
• General Link fields
• General Link with Search
• Image alt text

These field types cover the majority of marketing and editorial content across enterprise websites.

The list of translatable field types is defined in /sitecore/experienceAccelerator/siteManagement/translatableFieldTypes:

<translatableFieldTypes>
<fieldType key="single-line text"/>
<fieldType key="multi-line text"/>
<fieldType key="rich text"/>
<fieldType key="Image"/>
<fieldType key="General Link"/>
<fieldType key="General Link with Search"/>
</translatableFieldTypes>

Excluded Fields

Some fields are intentionally skipped during translation, including:

• Shared fields
• Certain system fields

This prevents unnecessary duplication of system-level configuration data.

Translation Happens in the Background

One of the most convenient aspects of the feature is that translations continue running even if users leave the page or close the browser window.

Teams can continue working elsewhere while SitecoreAI processes the localization tasks in the background.

However, Sitecore recommends avoiding changes to source-language content until the translation job finishes to ensure consistency between versions.

Centralized Localization Visibility

After translation completes, the Localization dashboard updates automatically.

Users can immediately see:

• Translation completion percentages
• Newly created language versions
• Remaining untranslated items

Once all items are processed, the dashboard reflects 100% localization coverage for the selected language.

This centralized reporting improves visibility for large global content operations.

Why This Matters for Enterprise Teams

AI-powered site translation addresses several common localization challenges:

For organizations managing multiple regional websites, these improvements can significantly reduce operational overhead.

Human Review Still Matters

Although AI dramatically speeds up localization, translated content should still be reviewed before publishing.

AI-generated translations may occasionally require adjustments for:

• Brand tone
• Regional language nuances
• Industry terminology
• Cultural context

A final editorial review ensures content quality and brand consistency across markets.

Final Thoughts

SitecoreAI’s full-site translation capability represents a major step toward AI-driven localization workflows.

By automating the creation of multilingual content versions directly within the Sitecore ecosystem, organizations can:

• Scale global digital experiences faster
• Improve localization efficiency
• Reduce manual translation workload
• Maintain centralized governance

As enterprise websites continue expanding across international markets, AI-assisted translation is becoming an essential capability for modern digital experience platforms.

Reference:

• Translate an entire site with AI | Sitecore Documentation