You can give your agents the power to automatically translate 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. This article describes how live conversation translation works. To activate conversation translations, see Turning on and off AI translations for ticket conversations.
For information about using conversation translation after it is activated, see Translating conversations in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
This article includes the following topics:
About conversation translation
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 conversations from the following channels:
- Live chat
- Social channels
- Sunshine Conversations channel
- Zendesk messaging
- Comments sent via other channels, such as email, web form, or API
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.
How conversations are translated
A user’s language is determined based on recent messages they have sent, then our translation services are used to translate text. We use Amazon Translate for live messages that require quick responses, such as chat, Zendesk messaging or social channels, and Amazon's Nova Micro for the other channels, such as email, web form, or API.
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.
The end-user experience
When an agent turns on automatic translation for a 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:
Translation limitations
Translation limitations 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 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.
- Translations will work with a subset of use cases for all incoming and outgoing email triggers.
- Rich text in the message might be lost or tweaked during translations.
- If the translation fails when an agent sends an outgoing email, the email will still be sent in the original language after five minutes.
- Messages containing Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or sensitive data are not translated due to data protection and content filtering restrictions.