Interface language and article language

ErmisAI keeps two language settings, and they are independent.

• Interface language — the language of the workspace itself: menus, buttons, tabs, labels.
• Article language — the language ErmisAI writes stories in.

An English-speaking desk publishing in Greek sets Interface language to English and Article language to Greek. Nothing forces the two to match.

The second one is the important one, and the rule behind it is short: the article language is a setting. It is never taken from the language of the source reporting. A Finnish newsroom monitoring English wires gets Finnish articles. A Greek newsroom monitoring Greek and Italian sources gets Greek articles from both.

Where to change them

Both live in one card, Language defaults, on the Newsroom tab of Settings. The card explains itself in the product: "Keep interface language separate from article language. Prompt language follows the article language by default." Under it are two dropdowns, Interface language and Article language.

The same two dropdowns also sit at the bottom of every step of the setup wizard, under the Back and Continue buttons, so you can set them before you finish setting up.

The interface switches language after you save and reload the page, not the instant you pick a new option.

The ten languages

Both dropdowns offer the same ten languages. With an English interface they read: English, Greek, Polish, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Finnish. Switch the interface language and the option names are rewritten in that language, so a Greek interface lists them in Greek.

Two of them are narrower than the name suggests. Portuguese is European Portuguese, and Norwegian is Bokmål — there is no Nynorsk option.

A new newsroom starts in the language of the page you signed up on. Sign up at the Greek version of the sign-up page and both settings start as Greek. You can separate them afterwards.

What the article language changes

Everything ErmisAI writes for you:

• The synthesised story behind each feed card. Source material is translated and rewritten into your article language, whatever language it arrived in.
• The first article, produced when you press Generate article in the story workspace.
• Every refinement you ask for in the chat panel, and every Quick completion.
• The suggested prompts offered under the chat box as Quick prompts — these are written in your article language, because they are sent to the assistant as written. This is what the settings card means by "prompt language follows the article language".
• The placeholder text on a story you have not composed yet.

Quotations are translated too. The instructions ErmisAI gives the model are explicit about it: quoted material is rendered naturally in the article language rather than left as a fragment in the original. If preserving a quote verbatim matters for a particular story, put it back yourself in the workspace.

The article language also shows up in the interface as a word. Feed cards on an uncomposed story read "Needs first article in {language}", and the story workspace headings read "First article (English)" or "Saved article (English)" with your own language in the brackets.

What the interface language changes

Menus, buttons, tabs, form labels, empty states, and the story categories shown on feed cards and in the story header. It does not touch a single word of any article.

Changing the article language once work has started

The article language is recorded on a story the moment you compose it, and everything afterwards follows that record rather than the current setting.

There is no automatic retranslation and no bulk re-run. If a composed draft is in the wrong language and it is still in Draft state, press Regenerate article and it will be rebuilt in the current setting. Once it has been submitted, regeneration is locked and the workspace says so: "Regeneration is locked because the saved article has already entered editorial workflow." While the story is in review, an owner or admin can free it by pressing Send back to compose in editorial review, after which you can regenerate.

Changing the article language also moves your newsroom to a different pool of synthesised stories, so the feed reloads in the new language. Newsrooms on different article languages never share synthesised stories, even with identical sources.

What stays in English whatever you choose

Some strings are written into the product in English and are shown identically in all ten languages. You will meet these:

• The signal labels on feed cards and in the story header: Verified signal, Strong signal, Developing signal, Low signal.
• The breaking pill and the live / stable marker on feed cards.
• The assistant's name on chat replies, ErmisAI.
• Revision history entries and their authors — Initial draft generated, Story workspace updated, Story note added, credited to ErmisAI Compose or Story workspace.
• Notification titles in the inbox, and the severity word on alert history rows (critical, warning, info).
• AI capacity, guardrail, and billing messages. If your workspace hits its monthly AI capacity, the toast is in English regardless of your interface language.

One thing that looks like it belongs on that list but does not: the source contribution sentences in editorial review ("Primary supporting source for politics coverage."). These are English templates in eight of the ten interface languages, but the category word inside them always follows your interface language, and on a Greek interface the two templates are rewritten in Greek — so they are not shown identically everywhere.

The sign-in and sign-up forms are only translated into English and Greek. On the other eight languages the surrounding page is translated but the form itself falls back to English.

Sources, categories, and search

You will not see raw foreign-language reporting in the workspace. The headline on a feed card, the Source story panel in the story header, and the event summary in the Reporting brief are all ErmisAI's own synthesis of the cluster, written in your article language. What keeps its original form is the outlet names in the source list.

Two related points worth knowing:

• Feed search matches your saved article headline, not the headline printed large on the card. Once you have composed a story the two can differ — when they do, your headline appears on the line beginning "Saved article:" — so searching for words you can see can return nothing.
• Story categories follow your interface language when ErmisAI recognises the category. A category it does not recognise is shown exactly as the pipeline produced it, which can be in the language of the source coverage.

You cannot filter or select sources by language. Sources are chosen from the catalogue, by country preset, or added as your own feed — never by the language they publish in. Since the output language does not follow the source language, this does not limit what you can publish in. See Choosing and adding sources.

The public website

Every page on ermisai.com carries the language in its address, and the header has a language dropdown showing the ten codes in capitals — EN, EL, PL, IT, ES, PT, SV, DA, NB, FI. Its screen-reader label is Change language. Choosing one reloads the same page in that language.

That dropdown is for the public site only. Inside the workspace, the language comes from your newsroom's Interface language setting, and there is no switcher in the sidebar.

Emails

• The welcome email after setup, and the confirmation when an account deletion completes, arrive in your interface language.
• The AI capacity email, sent when the newsroom passes 80% and 100% of its monthly capacity, arrives in your article language.