Showing reviews in a visitor's own language

A shop that sells across borders has the same problem in every direction: the reviews that would convince a German visitor are written in Turkish, and the visitor closes the page before working that out.

Kudo can translate published reviews into up to five languages you choose, and show a visitor the one that matches their browser. It is on Pro and AI Pro.

Turning it on

Choose the languages on the Widgets screen. Five is the cap, and it is a real limit rather than a round number: each language is a translation of every review you have and every review you will ever publish, so the count is a running cost rather than a one-off.

Then set the widget to translate. A widget left on its default shows every review exactly as written, which is the right behaviour for a business whose customers all speak one language.

The rule the whole feature is built on

A translation sits beside the original. It never replaces it.

The review your customer wrote is what stays in the review, in the structured data search engines read, and in any feed Kudo produces. The translation is an extra copy, shown to a visitor who would not otherwise understand it, and always carrying a label saying it is a translation.

Two things follow from that, and both matter more than they look:

A visitor can always see the original. "Show original" is a switch on the review itself, not a request that reloads anything, because both versions are already on the page.

Nothing is published under a customer's name that the customer did not write. A machine translation presented as somebody's own words in another language is a statement about a named person they never made. Labelling it is what makes the feature honest rather than merely useful.

What happens when a review changes

Editing a review's text deletes its translations, and the next scheduled run writes them again from the new text. That is automatic and needs nothing from you.

It exists because the alternative is worse: a review edited in Turkish and still carrying last week's English translation would be showing two different reviews to two different visitors.

What it does not do

It does not translate on the visitor's request. Translations are written in the background on a schedule, so nothing waits on a model while somebody is looking at your page. A review published this morning may not be translated yet this afternoon.

It does not translate your own words. Your business name, your description, your reply to a review and the label on the widget stay as you wrote them. Only the customer's review is translated, because that is the only part a visitor cannot get past.

It does not slow the widget down. A page that translates nothing costs nothing extra however many widgets ask for it.

It is not a language switcher for your whole page. The Kudo dashboard and the marketing pages are in English and Turkish; this feature is about the reviews themselves.

Frequently asked questions

Which plan do I need?
Pro or AI Pro. Reviews are shown as written on the Free plan.

How many languages?
Five at a time. You can change which five, and a language you remove stops being shown.

Does the translation replace what my customer wrote?
No, never. The original is what the review is; the translation is shown beside it and labelled, and a visitor can switch back with one tap.

Do search engines see the translation or the original?
The original. What a customer wrote is what goes into the structured data and into any feed, which is what keeps those honest.

I edited a review. Is the old translation still showing?
No. Editing the text removes the translations, and they are rewritten from the new text on the next run.

Still stuck? Write to support@getkudo.co and say which language is missing.