Which language is displayed?

Which language is displayed where and when might be confusing at first. That's why we have listed the different language settings and how they affect your user experience.

The following information applies to the language displayed on Confluence pages. If you are using Translations for Confluence for knowledge base articles in Jira Service Management (JSM), please refer to the page translations of Jira Service Management articles.

Which language is displayed to whom?

For logged-in Atlassian users

The language a user sees when accessing a Confluence page will depend on the following factors, in order from highest to lowest importance:

The language the user chose in the language drop-down on a previous visit. Selecting the language on one page will impact all pages on any Confluence Cloud instance that uses Translations for Confluence.
The language preference set in the user's profile (see below). That language setting impacts all Atlassian cloud products (Jira, JSM, Team Calendars).
The language preference set in the user's web browser.
The global default language for the site, as defined by the Confluence site administrator (see below).
If there is no translation matching any of the settings above, the content of the first language macro found on the page will be displayed.

For anonymous users and users blocking 3rd-party cookies

For users without an Atlassian log-in or those blocking 3rd-party cookies in their browsers, the experience will be different. The order for the language selection is as follows:

The language preference set in the user's web browser.
The global default language for the site, as defined by the Confluence site administrator (see below).
If there is no translation matching any of the settings above, the content of the first language macro found on the page will be displayed.

Anonymous users can still use the language drop-down. Selections in the language drop-down only have an effect until the page is reloaded or the user navigates to a different page.

Why does the page title not change?

Unfortunately, translating the page title is not possible on Confluence Cloud due to the different data structures 🙁. The title translation is a feature available on Translations for Confluence Data Center/Server. So if you change the language, the content will adapt, whereas the page title will always remain the same.

Language Settings

Global default language

Confluence Administrators can set the global default language for the entire site. Read Atlassian's documentation on how this is done.

Different language settings in the user profile

Individual users can choose a display language that differs from the global default for your site. They can do this by changing the Account Preferences in their user profile (tap the Language option and pick a language).
These account preferences are used for all Atlassian products (see Atlassian's documentation).