The Translation Workbench is the built-in tool for translating Setup metadata — labels, picklist values, custom messages, custom apps, custom tabs, validation error messages, page layout section headers — into other languages.
You enable it in Setup -> Translation Settings, choose languages, then go to Translate to translate item-by-item.
What it translates:
- Field labels and help text.
- Picklist value labels.
- Validation rule error messages.
- App labels, tab labels, section headers.
- Custom buttons / quick action labels.
- Knowledge article translation status (separate but related).
What it does NOT translate:
- Record data (e.g., Account.Name) — that's user-entered data, not metadata.
- Lightning component label localisation — needs to be done via custom labels (Setup -> Custom Labels) which are workbench-translatable.
User experience: a user's Locale + Language settings on their User record determine what translations they see. Switch a user from English to French, and labels you've translated render in French; ones you haven't are shown in the default org language.
Practical recommendation: for global orgs, treat translations as a release artefact. Whenever a new field or picklist value goes live, schedule a translation pass. Otherwise translations drift and users in non-English locales see ugly mixes of English+local labels.