When a Help Center translation disappears.

The symptom

The public Help Center resolved to the en-de locale. The theme used translation-helper keys for its custom navigation, hero, cards, search prompts and footer. Because it had no en-de.json, those labels rendered blank. A page can be technically available while its important words are missing.

The decision

The fix moved the custom labels to Zendesk Dynamic Content and gave every item an active default English variant. That made English the fallback for a locale without its own approved copy. An unused CSS layer from another brand and obsolete translation entries were removed to keep the theme clean.

The verification

The corrected theme referenced 83 custom content items, and all 83 had matching Dynamic Content items with active English defaults. A fresh export of the published theme matched the corrected source; the public en-de page showed its navigation, hero, cards, footer and search prompts. The mobile check found no horizontal overflow, and the browser console showed no warnings or errors in that check.

The lesson

Test the locale the public URL actually resolves to, not only the locale expected in the design file. A fallback rule is useful only when the rendered page and the published configuration prove that it works.