Working with Clients · Article 4.5
Multi-language proposals: matching the client's language
Each proposal is rendered in exactly one language — pick the one your client prefers and Clozo translates everything legally significant: emails, PDF section headers, VAT disclaimers, payment terms.
EU freelancers serve mixed-language client bases — a German design freelancer might serve a Dutch agency this week and a Spanish startup next. Each client gets a proposal in their language. Clozo handles the language switching at every layer that matters: email subject, email body, PDF title, PDF section headers, VAT disclaimer text, payment terms, late-payment fee references. Your line-item descriptions stay in whatever language you typed them — those are content, not chrome.
Step by step
Set your default language in
/settings(article 3.6). Most users keep this as their working language.
In the proposal wizard Step 1, override per proposal if needed.
The Language dropdown shows EN/DE/NL/FR/PL/ES; pick the client's preferred language. Saving the draft locks the language until you next edit Step 1.
Verify in Step 5 (Preview).
The preview PDF renders in the chosen language. Section headers, totals, VAT disclaimer, and payment terms all switch. Line-item descriptions stay as you typed them.
Send.
The email subject and body match the proposal language. Once sent, the language is frozen.
For a follow-up proposal in a different language
, just create a new proposal — the language can be different from the previous one for the same client. Multi-language clients are common; the client record itself doesn't carry a language preference (that's coming).
Why this works this way
Languages are bound at issue time, not at view time. The PDF that the client receives is rendered once in the chosen locale and cached in R2; subsequent views (or the client coming back six months later) get the same file. The Clozo-hosted client portal at app.useclozo.com/p/{slug} does have a UI-chrome language switcher (the "Sign", "Decline", "Pay" buttons can render in any of the six languages), but the document content stays in its issued language for legal traceability — translating "the same contract" between languages would invite disputes about which version is binding. This is the same logic most courts use for multilingual contracts: the language of the original signed document is the controlling one.
The EN-first translation pipeline is part of why we don't translate ad-hoc. EN is the "gold standard" — that's where the source of truth lives. Translators (specialist agents per locale) work from EN, and the resulting locale strings ship into the i18n bundle. Statutory text — VAT exemption notices, reverse-charge wording, the German Kleinunternehmer §19 UStG line, the French art. 293 B CGI line — is reviewed by an EU VAT specialist and never machine-translated [D-088c]. If you spot a translation issue, report it via Settings → Help → Suggest an edit; we don't accept inline patches because the legal review needs to run on every change.
Troubleshooting
Keep reading
Configuration
Default language and currency: setting the locale of every document
Two settings determine the language of your emails and PDFs and the currency of your line items — picked once, applied to every proposal unless you override per-document.
Working with Clients
Adding a client: the four fields that matter
Name, email, country, and the B2B/B2C flag — those four fields turn an empty client record into one Clozo can build legally correct invoices from.
Quick Start
Send your first proposal
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