How to Create Multilingual Client-Facing Dashboards with BabelViz in

The quickest way to deliver custom, multilingual Tableau dashboards to your local and international clients

By Pat

Delivering personalized, multilingual dashboards to clients is crucial for effective communication and client satisfaction. BabelViz offers a powerful solution to create and manage multilingual Tableau dashboards effortlessly.

Whether your clients are local or international, they expect data visualizations that speak their language. With BabelViz, you can easily create custom, multilingual Tableau dashboards that cater to your clients' language preferences, enhancing their experience and understanding of the data presented.

Now that we understand the importance of multilingual dashboards, let's explore two approaches to creating them:

• Manually translate dashboard elements in Tableau for each language.
• Use BabelViz, a specialized tool that automates the translation process for Tableau dashboards. BabelViz uses advanced algorithms to accurately machine translate dashboard elements while preserving the context and meaning of your data visualizations.

Option 1 — Manual Translation in Tableau

How to Manually Create Multilingual Dashboards in Tableau

Let's start with the manual approach:

Creating multilingual dashboards in directly in Tableau requires significant manual effort. You'll need to create separate workbooks for each language, manually translate all text elements, and set up language selection parameters.

This approach can be time-consuming and prone to errors, especially when dealing with multiple languages or frequent updates to your dashboards.

If you want to avoid the manual translation process, you can use BabelViz to automate and streamline the creation of multilingual dashboards.

Key Steps for Manual Translation in Tableau

If you choose to go the manual route, here are some key steps to follow:

Duplicate workbooks - Create copies of your workbooks for each language you want to support. This is usually referred to as XML hacking, which can easily break as Tableau updates its codebase and the underlying XML structure changes.

Create language parameter - Set up a parameter to allow users to switch between languages.

Create a calculated field for every single text element - Use calculated fields with complex logic to switch between language versions based on the parameter selection.

Update dashboard - Replace original text elements with the language-specific calculated fields.

Test thoroughly - Ensure all elements display correctly in each language.

Obligatory ongoing maintenance - Implement rigorous regression testing on a monthly basis. As Tableau pushes updates, you must review every single workbook and confirm the XML is intact and your calculations still work. Every single workbook and calculation must be checked for accuracy as they may break.

All the above can be time-consuming and challenging if not impossible to maintain, especially for dashboards with frequent updates or multiple language requirements. Furthermore, it will eventually break when Tableau's XML structure changes.

This brings us to our second option, BabelViz, a tool that can significantly streamline the process of creating multilingual dashboards.

Option 2 — Using BabelViz

How to Quickly Create Multilingual Dashboards with BabelViz

Manual translation in Tableau is time-consuming and often inconsistent across languages, leading to delays in dashboard delivery and potential misinterpretations. Moreover, the need for ongoing maintenance invalidates this option for most Tableau users.

But what if you could automate the entire translation process while ensuring accuracy and consistency? BabelViz does the heavy lifting for you, translating your Tableau dashboards quickly and accurately. Here's how it works in a nutshell:

Drag and drop our extension onto your Tableau workbook.

Have the user select the languages they want to translate into.

Done. BabelViz automatically translates all text elements, including titles, labels, and custom text.

This streamlined process saves you countless hours of manual work and ensures consistency across all language versions of your dashboard.

Additionally, BabelViz maintains a translation memory/glossary, which learns from your industry-specific terminology. This feature ensures that future translations become even more accurate and tailored to your specific needs.

To make language switching seamless for your clients, BabelViz also helps you set up a language selection parameter in your dashboard. This allows users to switch between languages with a simple click, enhancing their experience and engagement with your data visualizations.

By using BabelViz, you not only save time but also ensure that your clients receive high-quality, accurately translated dashboards that speak their language.

With these powerful features and best practices, you're well-equipped to create impressive, multilingual Tableau dashboards for your clients. By leveraging BabelViz, you'll save time, ensure consistency, and deliver a superior experience to your diverse client base.

Ready to take your client-facing dashboards to the next level? Don't hesitate to reach out - we're happy to help you get started with BabelViz!