| Suite | Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus |
| Support | Team, Professional, or Enterprise |
You can give your agents the power to automatically translate incoming messages from live conversation channels in the Zendesk Agent Workspace, if they so choose. This allows agents to communicate with end users and other agents, even if they are using different languages.
For information about using live conversation translation after it is activated, see Translating conversations in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
This article includes the following topics:
About live conversation translation
In this section, we’ll discuss the following topics related to live conversation translation:
Understanding live conversation translation
Live conversation translation gives agents the option to automatically translate incoming messages (coming from the end user) and outgoing messages (going to the end user) in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. It works in live conversations from the following channels:
- Live chat
- Social channels
- Sunshine Conversations channel
- Zendesk messaging
Additionally, the live conversation translation feature in Agent Workspace also supports the automatic translation of incoming comments sent via other channels, such as email, web form, or API. However, it doesn't support the translation of any outbound emails sent to end users.
If the agent’s and end user’s languages differ, a translation banner is displayed informing the agent of the language difference, and they can choose to enable translation for that conversation.
Limitations to this feature include:
- There is a 5,000-character limit per message for translation. Any message over 5,000 characters will not be translated.
- SunCo Shorthands are not supported for translations.
- Translations for third-party widgets are not supported.
- Our translation service (Amazon translate) cannot accurately translate texts written in a phonetic manner. For example, translation will only work for Hindi text in Devanagari script but won't work when it is written in Roman script.
How conversations are translated
A user’s language is determined based on recent messages they have sent, then Amazon Translate is used to translate text.
The length and number of the messages can affect the language analysis. There's no guaranteed length at which the language will always be detected, but longer messages produce better results.
If the text scan detects that the agent’s and end user’s languages are different, the translation banner is displayed. If the text scan can't detect the language (for example, the message was too short to determine the language), the banner doesn’t appear.
If you don't see the translation banner, click the ticket options menu, then click Translate.
Both the original and translated messages sent by the agent appear in the Event log. End-user messages appear only in the original language.
Languages supported in live conversation translation
The following languages are currently supported in live conversation translation:
| Arabic (ar) | French (fr) | Italian (it) | Simplified Chinese (zh-cn) |
| Bulgarian (bg) | French - Canada (fr-ca) | Japanese (ja) | Spanish (es) |
| Czech (cs) | German (de) | Korean (ko) | Swedish (sv) |
| Danish (da) | Greek (el) | Norwegian (no) | Thai (th) |
| Dutch (nl) | Hebrew (he) | Polish (pl) | Traditional Chinese (zh-tw) |
| English - United Kingdom (en-gb) | Hindi (hi) | Portuguese - Brazil (pt-br) | Turkish (tr) |
| English - United States (en-us) | Hungarian (hu) | Romanian (ro) | Ukrainian (uk) |
| Finnish (fi) | Indonesian (id) | Russian (ru) | Vietnamese (vi) |
The end-user experience
When an agent turns on automatic translation for a live conversation, the end user does not receive an activation notification—agent messages simply appear in their detected language. However, translated agent messages are identified in the conversation.
In a live chat, translated messages have a Show original link, which end users can click to display the untranslated message:
In messaging and Social Messaging conversations, translated messages are identified by the word Translated in their detected language. Unlike live chat conversations, however, they cannot display the untranslated version of the message:
Activating live conversation translation for agents
Account admins can give agents the ability to automatically translate incoming messages, if they choose, by activating the feature in Admin Center.
To activate live conversation translation
- In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Settings. - In the Settings tab, locate the Translations section then select Agents can translate conversations.
- Click Save tab.
Agents can now choose to automatically translate incoming messages in the Agent Workspace.
To deactivate live conversation translation
- In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Settings.
- In the Settings tab, locate the Translations section then deselect Agents can translate conversations.
- Click Save tab.
54 comments
Keti
Is it possible to remove the "(translated)" text from outbound messages?
From a customer experience perspective, it doesn’t look great for customers to see that an agent is using translation to respond to their request. While agents can disable translation manually, they might forget, leading to unnecessary "(translated)" tags in responses.
For example:
1.The agent enables translation, and the ticket is translated into their language.
2.The agent uses an external tool (e.g., DeepL) to write the response in the customer’s original language.
3.Even though the reply is already in the customer’s language (after pasting in Zendesk), it still displays as "(translated)", on end customer side, which is misleading.
Would there be a way to prevent this from happening automatically?
0
Tobias Hermanns
Hi Zendesk!
Current Translation tool implementation in Agent Workspace is quite limited and often not good working.
Do you plan a review here? Do you plan move to DeepL which is better? Does AI Agent license will get a better translation in future powered by Chat GPT?
Why you can´t integrate DeepL Zendesk integration by default, it works…:
Thanks
1
Tony
I hope you're doing well. If you are inquiring about outbound email updates, I currently do not have any information on this matter. We recommend that our users regularly visit our news page to stay informed:
What's new in Zendesk
Have a nice day!
Best regards
0
Denis C Chudin
Hi there,
Are there any updates about translation for email channel? Because as I see this case was very popular in the comments 3 years ago. May be since then, something has changed?
1
Shawna James
-1
WhatsApp Connector
Hello,
Any plans to include the email translation for outbound messages?
Thanks.
0
Viachaslau
I agree with Adrienne Yeoh. DeepL is much better
0
Adrienne Yeoh
Based on our experience, Google Translate is not too accurate. especially with French/Japanese language. We found a better Translation service in Deepl. Might Zendesk move to better translation services in the near future?
1
PJ
The live conversation translation feature doesn't work on tickets via the Mobile SDK channel. You can refer to the article Understanding and Activating Live Conversation Translation for more information about this.
Live conversation translation gives agents the option to automatically translate incoming messages (coming from the end user) and outgoing messages (going to the end user) in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. It works in live conversations from the following channels:
0
Duangkamon
Hi Joyce,
We have tickets from mobile SDK which has more than 200 characters but the translation banner hasn't showed up. I can't find other details about this feature outside of this article.
Could you help me check why the banner not showing up here ?
Thank you
0
Sign in to leave a comment.