Add a report language switcher

Last updated: July 26, 2026

Once you’ve translated a report’s canvas (see Translate report visuals), Daxlate can put the choice of language in the reader’s hands. Saving a translated report generates a _translations_languages table; drop its Language field onto a slicer and anyone viewing the report can switch its language on the page.

This is the first way to check a translation in Power BI Desktop at all, since the ?language= URL setting only takes effect in the Power BI Service.

Add the slicer #

1. Open the translated report in Power BI Desktop.
2. Add a Slicer visual to the page.
3. Drag the Language field from the _translations_languages table into the slicer.
4. Optionally format it as a dropdown and place it somewhere that repeats across pages.

Select a language and the report’s translated chrome, visual titles, headers, buttons, and text boxes, switches to it. A single selection wins; clearing the slicer falls back to following the reader’s own locale, exactly as before.

What the slicer moves, and what it doesn’t #

The slicer drives the report canvas text that Daxlate translated. Table and matrix column headers and field names come from the semantic model, which Power BI resolves from the connection’s locale, so those follow the reader’s language rather than the slicer. Selecting a right-to-left language switches the text but doesn’t mirror the page layout.