Managing languages in an AI agent for messaging

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Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus

This functionality is part of AI agents - Essential.

AI agents for messaging include language settings that allow you to specify a default language and let you configure them to speak in multiple languages for an improved customer experience. Using these settings, you can select a language for a single-language AI agent or create multilingual AI agents.

This article includes the following topics:

• Supporting single-language AI agents
• Supporting multilingual AI agents
• Customizing automatic message translations (Legacy)

Supporting single-language AI agents

By default, your AI agent language is set to your account's default language.

To specify a default language for an AI agent

1. In Admin Center, click AI in the sidebar, then select AI agents > AI agents.
2. Click Manage AI agents for messaging.
3. Click the AI agent you want to update.
4. Click the Settings tab.
5. Expand the Language section, and use the drop-down menu to select your language.
   Note: For consistency and ease of comprehension, the default language selection should match the language used to write your conversation.

Supporting multilingual AI agents

If your customer base uses multiple languages for communication, there are several settings throughout Suite you can configure, including:

• Activating automatic translation for an AI agent
• Customizing automatic message translations for standard responses
• Translating help center articles
• Translating conversations in the Zendesk Agent Workspace
• Testing multilingual AI agents

Activating automatic translation for an AI agent

In your AI agent settings, you can activate a feature that automatically translates the text elements in an AI agent’s standard responses configured in the Behavior tab

Note: If you had a draft or published AI agent as of February 2, 2025, this setting also applies to an AI agent’s answer steps, including AI agent messages, options, button text and links, carousel card titles, image descriptions, and variables.

These responses should be created in the AI agent's default language. The AI agent uses the language setting to determine the source language when translating text. If the AI agent is embedded in a help center or website, the AI agent text is translated into the customer's selected browser language.

You can override automatic translations of standard responses by creating custom message translations.

Activating automatic translation in an AI agent does not impact text elements managed outside of the AI agent settings, such as help center articles. You can, however, use dynamic content to translate some of these elements in Zendesk Support. See Providing multiple language support with dynamic content.

To activate automatic translation

1. In Admin Center, click AI in the sidebar, then select AI agents > AI agents.
2. Click Manage AI agents for messaging.
3. Click the AI agent you want to update, then click the Settings tab.
4. Expand the Language section and use the drop-down menu to select your default language.
5. Select Translate AI agent messages to activate automatic translation.
6. In Select languages for automatic translation, specify the customer-side languages you want to include in the automatic translation process.

   You can open the drop-down menu and scroll through the options or begin typing to filter the language options. You can test the auto-translated AI agent responses at this point, or after publishing the AI agent.

7. Publish the AI agent after changing the language.

Customizing automatic message translations for standard responses

Note: This section applies only if you're on Support Professional and above or Suite Growth and above.

If you find that the automatic translations for some AI agent messages don’t meet your standards—for example, by translating product and brand names, using incorrect pronouns, or using inaccurate phrasing—you can replace them with custom translations.

Custom message translations are manually written versions of the text in the message fields of a AI agent’s standard response. Translation customization is not available for other automatically translated text elements (such as option or button text).

To customize a message in a particular language, that language must be:

• Included in the automatic translation settings.
• Added to the list of available languages in Zendesk Support.

Custom-translated AI agent messages are sent to end users based on their detected language. If a message field does not have a customized translation in the end user’s detected language and that language is included in the automatic translation settings, it will be autotranslated.

To create a custom translation for a standard AI agent response

1. In Admin Center, click AI in the sidebar, then select AI agents > AI agents.
2. Click Manage AI agents for messaging.
3. Click the AI agent you want to update, then click the Behavior tab.
4. Expand the section you want to update.
5. Under the AI agent message, click Manage translations.

   

6. Click the pencil icon for the language you want to customize, then enter the custom text.

   

   Repeat this step for additional languages if needed.

7. Click Done.

   You can test the custom AI agent responses at this point, or after publishing the AI agent.

8. Publish the AI agent to apply the custom translation.

Translating help center articles

AI-generated replies sent by the AI agent might suggest help center articles in a conversation to direct customers to information that may help them self-solve their questions.

To offer help center articles in multiple languages, you’ll need to activate those languages, then add translated versions of those articles to your help center.

For more information, see Configuring your help center to support multiple languages and Localizing help center content.

Translating conversations in the Zendesk Agent Workspace

After taking over a conversation from the AI agent, human agents can use the native translation feature in the Zendesk Agent Workspace to communicate with customers and other agents across multiple languages. This feature is activated by default for all customers using Agent Workspace but is only available for agents with a Chat seat.

For more information, see Translating conversations in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.

Testing multilingual AI agents

You can test your AI agent to evaluate the automatic and custom translation results and understand the end-user experience.

To test AI agent translations

1. In Admin Center, click AI in the sidebar, then select AI agents > AI agents.
2. Click Manage AI agents for messaging.
3. Click the AI agent you want to test.
4. On the AI agent's edit page, click Test AI agent. The testing sidebar opens.
5. At the top of the sidebar, use the drop-down to select the language you want to test.

   

6. Use the sidebar to start a conversation with the AI agent. To reset and start a new conversation, click the Reload icon ().

   Repeat these steps for each language you want to test.

Customizing automatic message translations (Legacy)

Note: This section applies only if you had a draft or published AI agent as of February 2, 2025. Additionally, you must be on Support Professional and above or Suite Growth and above.

In addition to customizing translations for standard responses, you can also customize translations for an AI agent’s answer steps. Translation customization is not available for other automatically translated text elements (such as option or button text).

To create a custom translation for an answer in bot builder

1. In Admin Center, click AI in the sidebar, then select AI agents > AI agents.
2. Click Manage AI agents for messaging.
3. Click the AI agent you want to update, then click the Answers tab.
4. Select the answer you're creating a custom translation for, then click the step you want to update.
5. Under the AI agent message, click Manage translations.

   

6. Click the pencil icon for the language you want to customize, then enter the custom text.

   

   Repeat this step for additional languages if needed.

7. Click Done. You can test the custom AI agent responses at this point, or after publishing the AI agent.
8. Publish the AI agent to apply the custom translation.