Custom Translations

The Arena Comments widget ships with built-in text in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and French. Custom Translations lets you replace any of those strings with your own wording — useful for matching your brand's voice, adapting terminology for your audience, or localizing a language that already ships with the widget.

No code changes or widget redeployment are needed. Translations are fetched at runtime and merged on top of the built-in defaults.

Prerequisites

• The Arena Comments widget installed on your page (see URL-Based Installation)
• Your site slug (found in the Arena dashboard under your site settings)
• A JSON file with the translation strings you want to override

When to use this

Use Custom Translations when you want to:

• Replace default labels with brand-specific language (e.g., "Post" instead of "Send")
• Provide alternative phrasing in a language the widget already supports
• Localize UI strings without modifying the widget bundle

Steps

1. Enable the attribute on your widget div

Add the data-custom-translations attribute to your Comments widget embed. No value is required — its presence alone activates the feature.

<div class="arena-comments-widget"
     data-site-id="[YOUR-SITE-ID]"
     data-site-slug="[YOUR-SITE-SLUG]"
     data-custom-translations>
</div>

<script async src="https://fast.arena.im/script.js?siteId=[YOUR-SITE-ID]"></script>

[YOUR-SITE-ID] and [YOUR-SITE-SLUG] are shown in the Arena dashboard embed code for your site.

2. Create your translations.json file

Create a translations.json file containing only the keys you want to override. Every key you omit keeps its built-in default value.

{
  "what_do_you_think": "Share your thoughts...",
  "show_more_comments": "Load More",
  "buttons": {
    "send": "Post Comment",
    "cancel": "Discard",
    "reply": "Respond"
  },
  "empty_state": {
    "label": "No comments yet. Start the conversation!"
  },
  "thread_header": {
    "sign_in": "Log in to add your voice.",
    "login": "Log In",
    "logout": "Log Out"
  },
  "footer": {
    "powered_by": "Powered by Arena"
  }
}

Any key listed in the Full Key Reference section below can be overridden.

3. Add per-language overrides (optional)

If your site serves multiple languages, you can include language-specific sections inside the same file. Wrap them under the language code (en, pt, es, or fr).

Top-level keys are applied as defaults; language-scoped keys override them for that specific language only.

{
  "what_do_you_think": "What do you think?",
  "buttons": {
    "send": "Post Comment"
  },
  "pt": {
    "what_do_you_think": "O que você acha?",
    "buttons": {
      "send": "Publicar"
    }
  },
  "es": {
    "what_do_you_think": "¿Qué piensas?",
    "buttons": {
      "send": "Publicar"
    }
  },
  "fr": {
    "what_do_you_think": "Qu'en pensez-vous ?",
    "buttons": {
      "send": "Publier"
    }
  }
}

4. Send your file to Arena Support

Arena hosts the translations file on our infrastructure at:

{ARENA_STATIC_API}/v1/sites/[YOUR-SITE-SLUG]/translations.json

To publish your file:

1. Prepare your translations.json following the format above
2. Send the file to the Arena support team ([email protected])
3. Include your site slug in the message so the team can deploy to the correct endpoint
4. Once the team confirms the file is live, reload your page — the widget will pick up the custom strings automatically

No widget redeployment or code change is needed after the file is deployed.

5. Verify

After Arena Support confirms the file is live:

1. Hard-reload your page (Cmd+Shift+R / Ctrl+Shift+R) to bypass the browser cache
2. Check that the strings you overrode now appear in the widget
3. If your site is multilingual, switch languages and verify each section

Common Customization Keys

The table below lists the most frequently customized keys and their built-in English defaults.

Supported Languages

The widget supports four languages. The active language is determined by your site configuration in the Arena dashboard.

Troubleshooting