# Categories

Categories in Publisher are managed differently than phrases, even if the management forms appear similar. You can not create a new category group or category in Publisher itself. The "New" and "Edit" actions will take you out of Publisher's settings pages and into native ExpressionEngine category management. Publisher only manages the translations of a category after it has been created. Publisher also does not translate the category group names.

## `{exp:publisher:translate_category}`

If you are not using the {exp:channel:categories} tag you might need to alter templates to translate categories. You can retrieve all translated information about a category with this tag.

### Parameters

* `cat_id="{category_id}"`Pass the ID of the category to retrieve.
* `return="cat_name"`Get a specific category field. Required if using as a single tag, not a tag pair.
* `lang_id="1|4|9"`The language ID you would like to show a translation for. This is only required if you want to display the content in a language other than the current language.

```
{exp:publisher:translate_category cat_id="1"}
    {cat_name}
    {cat_url_title}
    {cat_description}
    {cat_image}
    {cat_order}
    {cat_id}
    {site_id}
    {group_id}
    {parent_id}
    {[custom_category_field]}
{/exp:publisher:translate_category}
```

This tag can alternatively be used as a single tag instead of a tag pair. In doing so you must specific which category field to return with the return parameter.

```
{exp:publisher:translate_category cat_id="1" return="cat_name"}
```

## Category Importing

Publisher 3.1 brought the ability to import categories. To perform an import, first you must export existing categories to create a properly formatted file for importing. The file will include a primary key column, default language column containing current category field values, and columns for each additional language. Once your translations are added to your .csv export file, use the same file to import your translations. You can not add new categories with your import file. Publisher will only import translations for existing categories.

Support is not provided for character encoding issues or improperly formatted imports, e.g. improper line breaks or characters, or malformed .csv files. 


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