When a customer with a Spanish name writes to me in English, I answer in English and add one line at the end: you’re welcome to write in Spanish if you’d rather. Many switch on the next message. They were managing fine in English. They’d just rather not have to.
Plenty of software companies have customers like that long before they offer Spanish support. They read the help center through a browser translation, write in careful English and hope for the best. Some give up and leave.
Adding Spanish doesn’t mean translating everything. Here’s where I’d start.
1. Decide who you’re talking to
Spanish in Spain and Spanish in Latin America differ in words and tone. A computer is an ordenador in Spain and a computadora in most of Latin America. Vosotros, the informal “you” for a group, is only used in Spain.
A help center speaks to everyone at once, so write it in a neutral Spanish that avoids words from only one country. A reply to one person can be looser. I write mine in the Spanish I learned in Galicia, vosotros and all.
2. Pick tú or usted, and stick to it
Tú is informal and usted is formal. Most software brands writing in Spanish now use tú, the same way English-language brands sound friendly. The real mistake is mixing both in the same help center. Pick one, put it in your style guide and use it everywhere.
3. Translate the right things first
Start with what a Spanish-speaking customer sees in their first month:
- saved replies for your ten most common questions,
- the help articles those replies link to,
- the emails every customer gets: welcome, password reset, failed payment,
- the error messages that send people to support most often.
The rest of the help center can follow, starting with whatever gets the most visits.
4. Keep a glossary
Some product words read better in English. Spanish speakers say feed, not fuente RSS, and login more often than inicio de sesión. Others should be translated. Decide once and write it down, so every article uses the same term. Otherwise customers see three different words for one thing and assume they’re three different features.
Correct isn’t the same as friendly
Grammar is the easy part. The hard part is tone: softening bad news, saying “that’s not possible yet” without sounding cold, sounding like someone who knows the product and not like a textbook.
That’s also where machine translation slips. It’s good for a first draft, and it gets better every year. But it gives you correct Spanish, and correct isn’t the same as friendly. Use it to go faster, and have a Spanish speaker check everything before it reaches a customer.
What it’s worth
A customer who can ask for help in their own language explains the problem better, gets it solved faster and stays longer. For a product with a real Spanish-speaking audience, it’s one of the cheapest ways to keep them.
I handle support in English and Spanish every day. If you’re thinking about adding Spanish, get in touch.