How to Change Language in Tableau

Building a dashboard that people actually use often comes down to one simple thing: can they understand it easily? If your team or clients are spread across the globe, that means presenting beautiful, insightful data in their native language. This guide will show you exactly how to change the language in Tableau, covering both the application's interface for your own use and, more importantly, how to localize your dashboards for a multilingual audience.

First, Which Language Are You Trying to Change?

In Tableau, "language" can mean two different things, and it's helpful to understand the distinction before you start clicking around. The two settings you'll encounter are the User Interface Language and the Workbook Locale.

• User Interface (UI) Language: This is the language of Tableau itself - the menus, buttons, toolbars, and help messages. Changing this setting is all about your personal experience as the dashboard creator. If you're more comfortable working in French or Korean, you can set the entire Tableau Desktop application to display in that language.
• Workbook Locale: This setting controls how data is formatted and displayed within your dashboard for your audience. It impacts things like date formats (e.g., Day/Month/Year vs. Month/Day/Year), number formatting (using commas vs. periods as decimal separators), and even certain map-based geographic information. This is for your end-users.

For the rest of this guide, we'll cover how to handle both scenarios, starting with the easy one: changing the application's UI.

How to Change the Tableau Desktop Interface Language

If you just want to change the language of the menus and settings you personally work with, the process is incredibly straightforward. It only takes a moment and a quick restart of the application.

Here are the step-by-step instructions:

1. Open the Language Menu: With Tableau Desktop open, navigate to the top menu bar and click on Help.
2. Choose Your Language: In the dropdown menu, hover over Choose Language. A sub-menu will appear listing all the available languages. Tableau currently supports languages like Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish.
3. Select the Language: Click on the language you want to switch to.
4. Restart Tableau: A small dialog box will pop up, informing you that you need to restart Tableau for the changes to take effect. Click OK, close Tableau completely, and then reopen it.

That's it! When Tableau starts up again, the entire user interface - from the "Connect to Data" screen to the deepest parts of the formatting menus - will be displayed in the language you selected. This makes it much easier to build dashboards if English isn't your first language.

Going Deeper: How to Localize Dashboard Content for Your Audience

Changing your own interface is helpful, but the real power comes from building dashboards that your audience can read in their preferred language. Imagine an executive in Spain opening your sales report and seeing all the titles, labels, and notes in perfect Spanish. This process is called localization, and while it requires a bit more setup than a simple menu click, it makes reports infinitely more accessible.

The best way to do this in Tableau is by using a combination of a language parameter and calculated fields. This technique lets you dynamically translate text on your dashboard with a simple dropdown menu.

Step 1: Set Up an On-the-Fly Translation Reference

Before you even open Tableau, it's a good idea to create a simple reference for your text. While you could use a separate spreadsheet, it's often easier to build the logic directly into Tableau with calculated fields, especially if you have a manageable amount of text. For this method, you just need to know what text elements you want to translate and what their translations are.

Consider a simple dashboard with a title, a caption, and an axis label. In English, these might be:

• "Quarterly Revenue"
• "Excludes one-time setup fees."
• "Sales Amount (USD)"

Do some research or work with a native speaker to get a quick translation sheet ready. For example, in Spanish, they would be:

• "Ingresos Trimestrales"
• "Excluye las tarifas de configuración únicas."
• "Monto de Ventas (USD)"

Having this list ready will make the next steps much smoother.

Step 2: Create a Language-Selection Parameter

A parameter in Tableau gives the user control over something in the dashboard. Here, we'll create one that lets users select a language from a list.

1. In the Data pane (on the left side of the screen), click the small dropdown arrow at the top right and select Create Parameter.
2. Give your parameter a descriptive name, like "Select Language."
3. For Data Type, choose String.
4. For Allowable values, choose List.
5. In the "List of values" box, add the names of the languages you want to support. For this example, add "English" and "Español" on separate lines.
6. Click OK. You will now see your new parameter in the bottom half of the Data pane. Right-click on it and select Show Parameter to make it visible on your sheet or dashboard.

Now you have a dropdown menu - time to make it do something!

Step 3: Build Your Translation Calculated Fields

This is where the magic happens. Instead of writing text directly into your dashboard titles and text objects, you'll use calculated fields that change based on what language the user selects in the parameter.

Let's create one for the dashboard title:

1. Click the same dropdown arrow in the Data pane and select Create Calculated Field.
2. Name it something clear, like "Localized - Title."
3. In the formula box, write a CASE statement. This statement tells Tableau: "Look at the value of the Select Language parameter. If it's this, show this text. If it's that, show that text."

Here’s what the formula would look like:

CASE [Select Language]
WHEN 'English' THEN 'Quarterly Revenue'
WHEN 'Español' THEN 'Ingresos Trimestrales'
END

Click OK. Now, you’ll see "Localized - Title" in your Dimensions list. Repeat this process for every piece of text you need to translate. For our example, you'd also create:

• A "Localized - Caption" calculation.
• A "Localized - Axis Label" calculation for your chart.

Step 4: Bring it All Together on Your Dashboard

Now that you have your localizer parameter and your dynamic calculated fields, putting it on the dashboard is the easy part.

• For your main title, drag a Text object onto your dashboard. Instead of typing text into it, click the "Insert" button and choose your Localized - Title field.
• For a chart's axis title, you'd simply drag the Localized - Axis Label field to the appropriate Rows or Columns shelf.

Once everything is in place, test it! Use the "Select Language" dropdown on your dashboard. When you switch it from "English" to "Español," you'll see every text field you replaced update instantly. It's an incredibly powerful way to build one dashboard that serves multiple teams.

Don't Forget About Formatting (Your Workbook Locale)

Alongside translating text, remember to consider cultural differences in formatting. A sales figure written as "$1,234.56" in the US is written as "1 234,56 $" in France. A date like "12/05/2024" means December 5th in the US but May 12th in Europe.

You can adjust this easily by setting your Workbook Locale:

1. Go to File > Workbook Locale.
2. A dropdown menu will appear. Instead of leaving it on "Automatic," you can select a specific country and language, like "French (France)" or "German (Germany)."

This tells Tableau to automatically format all numbers, dates, and currency values according to that region's standards, ensuring your data is unambiguous and easy for anyone to read.

Final Thoughts

Making your Tableau instance readable for yourself is as simple as a few clicks, but empowering a global audience requires a bit more thought. By combining a "language switcher" parameter with dynamic calculated fields, you can create a single, elegant dashboard that speaks everyone's language and makes your data truly accessible.

Not everyone has the time to configure complex localization fields or wants to spend their days writing CASE statements just to build a multi-language report. At Graphed, we’ve built a tool that skips the technical setup entirely. By connecting your data sources and simply asking for what you need in plain English - like "create a report showing our revenue by country for our European teams" - you can generate fully interactive, real-time dashboards in seconds, so you can spend more time on insights, not on translations.