Short Introduction
As brands expand globally, clear communication across languages becomes a challenge for every marketing team. Translating the same email campaign into multiple languages often involves creating several versions, managing different files, and ensuring each update stays perfectly aligned.
Multilingual Templates address this issue by allowing you to design once and handle all language versions within a single template. Each translation uses the same layout, ensuring visual consistency while keeping content tailored to each audience.
Important Details and Terminology
Before we get into the workflow itself, let's cover a few things that could come up along the way.
Any template in your collection can easily be turned into a Multilingual template, and similarly, every Multilingual template can always be used as a regular template without extra steps or limitations. Whether a template is regular or Multilingual doesn't change how you use it afterward; in other words, the template's appearance and behavior stay the same, whether it is multilingual or not. Think of this as an optional feature that's always accessible in the editor when designing any template, and it’s entirely your choice whether or not to use it.
This is because, behind the scenes, a Multilingual template is essentially a regular template with "superpowers." This superpower, as the name suggests, enables it to register and remember its content in different languages, which we will call language mutations, or simply mutations.
When you define the first language version in a Multilingual template, it is automatically labeled as Primary. The Primary language version defines the base design of the entire Multilingual template, which all other mutations will follow and inherit when you create them. In other words, all other language versions of the Primary template inherit the layout and content of the Primary template as it exists at that time. You can reassign the Primary status to any other template whenever necessary.
Every Multilingual template must always have exactly one Primary language version at any given time. Language version marked as Primary cannot be deleted - you need to reassign the Primary status to another language before deleting it.
To recap, each Multilingual template has two core parts:
Primary template that defines the default layout of the Multilingual template and acts as a starting point for all its subsequent language mutations.
Mutations (different language versions of the Primary template) that follow the same layout as the Primary template and contain translations of its content.
It's important to differentiate between the templates' layout and content:
The layout refers to how Structures and Content Blocks (Text, Image, Video, Button, etc.) are arranged within the template.
By content, we mean the information these Content Blocks display (for Text Blocks, it's the text; for Image Blocks, it's the actual image; for Button Blocks, it's the URL it redirects to, etc.), along with specific styling (font size, background color, and many others).
If you're interested, you can later explore the JSON structure of a Multilingual template. There, you'll see that the multilingual template includes the complete, fully specified layout and content of the primary template. What makes this unique, however, is that the definition is then followed by a list of modifications to specific blocks (their translations), grouped by language. When you download or export a particular mutation, we consider the language you want, replace the content of the primary template with modifications from that language group, and serve it to you.
These "behind-the-scenes" insights will hopefully help you gain a clearer understanding of what all this magic is about and why certain limitations exist.
Multilingual Templates: How to use them?
If this is your first time using the Multilingual templates feature, we suggest you follow along to get the most out of this tutorial.
To get started, you can either create a new template from scratch or modify an existing/premade one. Which starting point you choose doesn't really matter, since even existing templates can be transformed into Multilingual ones. In this workflow, we will begin with an already existing template.
1. Define the Primary language version of the Multilingual template
As you open your template in the Topol PRO editor, you will notice a new dropdown labeled "Create mutation".
This dropdown is the main control center for managing all options for the Multilingual templates feature. Go ahead and click on it.
Since you're starting with a standard (non-multilingual) template, no language options have been set up yet. That's why the dropdown doesn't show any languages; instead, it asks you to add one. In this case, the first one.
Click the "Add language" button. The dropdown expands to show a list of over 180 languages and their language codes for selection.
Use the Search bar at the top of the list to filter it. You can search for a language by its full name (e.g., "English") or by its language code (e.g., "en"). If you have some free time, go ahead and browse the list.
The first language you select will be labeled as Primary (the main version of the template), but you can change it later after creating other language versions that can be assigned this label. In our example, we click on "English".
A few things happen:
The dropdown label now displays the currently selected and active language version. When a language version is active, the editor shows how this specific language version looks, and when you edit it, you are editing only this active language version. This will become more obvious when we create more mutations. The active language version is highlighted with a green border and a green check mark in the dropdown.
Since this is the first language you set, it is automatically labeled as Primary. The Primary language is marked with a yellow "Primary" symbol.
The currently displayed template is now linked with the newly created language version.
At this stage, we have successfully created the first version of our current template in the initial language. Since it is the only language version available so far, it has automatically been marked as the Primary.
It doesn't matter at what stage of creating your template you choose to set its language version. You can either specify the language first and then design the whole template, or design the whole template first (or start with a premade template) and then define its language. This has no impact on the final outcome.
Our Primary template now looks like this:
2. Create a mutation of your Primary language version
We have just created the first language version of our Multilingual template, which is set as the main (Primary) one. Now, let's create another language version (mutation) from it. This time, let's translate it into Czech.
In the dropdown menu, which now shows English as the Primary and selected language:
Click "Add language"
Search for Czech
Select it
A few things have just happened:
When you add a new language version, it automatically becomes the active one, and the editor will display it. The green border and check mark indicate this. You can activate other mutations just by clicking on them, and the language version in the editor will change instantly.
Since the active version is now Czech, the dropdown label also displays Czech. The dropdown label always shows the current active language, making it easy to see which language version you're viewing or editing.
The Primary status stays the same when adding new languages, but note that every other language, besides the Primary one, displays two buttons instead:
Set as primary - This assigns the Primary label to that language and removes it from its previous owner. There can only be one Primary version at a time.
🗑️ - This opens a dialog to confirm whether to delete this language mutation. If you delete a currently active mutation, the Primary will automatically become active instead.
Although the Czech mutation is now active, the template remains the same as the Primary (English) version. This is because each new mutation is created as a copy of the Primary template. However, since our new Czech mutation is now active, we can start editing its content, and these changes will only apply to it.
3. Customizing language mutations for specific markets
In addition to translating and adjusting the styling of texts within Text Blocks or Button Blocks, you can also update images inside Image Blocks, change video URLs inside Video Blocks, replace GIF URLs inside GIF Blocks, and modify HTML code inside HTML Blocks. All changes are automatically stored as you make them, and only for the mutation that is active.
As a result, our Czech version of the Multilingual template now looks like this:
Note that we have translated all the texts, adjusted some text styling (such as color, font weight, and alignment), and replaced images. All these changes apply only to the language version that was active when they were applied. Try switching between the Czech and English versions using the dropdown menu to see how the template switches to a version without any of these modifications. Always keep in mind that any change you make to the Primary template will be reflected in all its other mutations as well.
Certainly, you can change the styling of other content blocks besides Text Blocks, such as Images or Button blocks. However, be aware that styling changes to blocks other than Text Blocks will not be specific to the active language version; they will also apply to the Primary template and all other mutations.
To recap:
If you modify any text in the Primary version, this change will be reflected in all other mutations.
If you modify any text in any non-primary language version, that change will apply only to that specific mutation.
If you modify any block other than text in any language version (Primary or its mutations), that change will be reflected in all other mutations.
A quite interesting situation happens when you add or remove blocks during mutation customization:
If you remove a Content Block from a mutation, it will also get removed from the Primary template and all other existing mutations.
If you add a new Content Block to a mutation, it will also appear in the Primary template and all other existing mutations, but without any custom content. For example, if you add an Image Block to a mutation and load an image into it, that Image Block with the image will become specific to that mutation. However, if you then switch to the Primary template or another mutation, you will only see an empty Image Block with no image at that spot (the default Content Block version without any actual content). It is then up to you to add language-specific content to each of these newly created Content Blocks.
4. Creating additional language mutations
You are free to create as many language mutations of the Primary template as you like, but you can only translate it into each language once (there can only be one Czech translation, one Polish translation, etc.).
As you add more translations following the steps mentioned earlier, you'll notice that each new translation inherits the design and content of the Primary mutation as it exists at that moment. Therefore, it is wise to keep the Primary mutation as polished as possible, since it will serve as the starting point for all subsequent mutations.
Sometimes, the Primary language version may become outdated, and one of its mutations might have the design and content you want future mutations to adopt. In such cases, just assign the "Primary" role to that mutation by clicking the "Set as primary" button in the dropdown.
5. Managing Multilingual template in the Template gallery
Save the Multilingual template as usual. When you return to the Topol application, you'll notice a new dropdown next to the template overview - the Template Language selector.
This dropdown appears only next to Multilingual templates that have at least one specified language. When you click on it, a list of all existing language versions of this template will be displayed. Select any of them, and the main overview image will update accordingly. In our example, we chose the Czech language from the dropdown:
This clearly indicates which language version you are exporting or downloading.
In the Template gallery, all Multilingual templates display only the Primary language version in the small preview. Additionally, all actions accessed through the three vertical dots will always relate to the Primary language version.
Final Words
Multilingual templates are a powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use feature designed for teams serving global audiences. They’re ideal for running multiple campaigns at once while keeping content tailored to each region.
However, even if you’re only handling two markets, they will save you a lot of time and effort. That’s why we strongly suggest trying them out. You might not need them right now, but as your business grows (and it will 🙏), this could easily become your new favorite feature.
This tutorial is quite long and sometimes pretty complex. If you got lost along the way or didn't quite catch something, please do not hesitate to contact our support - we are always happy to help!