Messaging includes language settings that allow you to specify a default bot language, and lets you configure your bot to speak in multiple languages for an improved customer experience. Using these settings, you can set the language used in a single-language bot, or create multilingual bots.
This article includes the following topics:
Supporting single-language bots
By default, your bot language is set to your account's default language. Or, if needed, you can specify a different language for the parts of your conversation you cannot edit, including:
To specify a default language for a bot
- In Admin Center, click
Channels in the sidebar, then select Bots and automations > Bots. - Click Manage bots.
- Hover your cursor over the bot you want to update and click Settings.
- Open the Language tab, and use the drop-down to select your language.
- Click Save at the bottom of the page.
Note: For consistency and ease of comprehension, the default language selection should match the language your conversation is written in.
Supporting multilingual bots
If your customer base uses multiple languages for communication, there are a number of settings throughout Suite that should be considered, including:
Enabling automatic translation for a bot
In your bot settings, you can enable a feature which automatically translates the text elements in a web or mobile bot you create yourself, including:
These elements should be created in the bot's default language, as described in the previous section. The bot uses the language setting to determine the source language when translating text.
To enable automatic translation
- In Admin Center, click Channels in the sidebar, then select Bots and automations > Bots.
- Click Manage bots.
- Hover your cursor over the bot you want to update and click Settings.
- Open the Language tab, and use the drop-down to select your language.
- Click the box to enable automatic translation.
- 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 and scroll through the options, or begin typing to filter the language options.
- Click Save at the bottom of the page.
- Republish the bot after changing the language.
Automatic translation for messaging automatically translates the bot text for your customers, based on their selected browser language.
Translating help center articles
You can 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 enable those languages in your Guide settings, 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 bot, 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 enabled 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.
19 Comments
I look forward to the appearance of the Ukrainian language. Without the support of the Ukrainian language, the functionality does not make sense for us :(
Is the automatic translation still going to be improved so we can exclude certain words? For instance not translating company names or specific English terms used in other languages?
Is it possible to disable the chat bot in the messenger?
Is it also possible to enable dynamic content for messenger? Automatic translations are just not good enough. Looks silly from customer point of view.
Hi Bram Goossens,
No, this isn't possible today but it's something that we are hoping to support in the future. Would you mind sharing more information about your particular scenario for reference? How are you expecting it to work without a bot? Thanks!
Not currently but it's something that we may consider in the future. We understand that auto-translations are not always ideal and more control here would definitely help. Thanks for your suggestion! I'll log that for future consideration.
- Miranda.
Can Flow Builder display translated articles? There are three versions of my article in simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese and English.
I use Simplified Chinese to create Flow Builder, but my clients use English, and the articles for clients are in Simplified Chinese. My articles are in English. I don’t know how to show my English articles to English clients.
It seems that you already have an existing conversation with my colleague regarding the same question, should you have any clarification kindly reply to the ticket so we can better assist you.
- Rachel
Hello, when the End User connects with an agent in a different language (lets say Spanish) once the conversation is over, the Answer Bot ask for Chat feedback but it always asks in English. How can I translate the chat feedback into the supported languages?
You need to create a dynamic content placeholder and add the following placeholder to the body of your CSAT email.
You can check our article, Are CSAT surveys multi-lingual? for more information about this.
Thank you and have a wonderful day ahead!
Kind regards,
Hello @...
I think there is some confusion. I am referring to the survey done after a Live Chat through the answer bot, not the survey sent by email:
The entirety of the answer bot and it's interactions are translated into the users selected language, but this small survey is not. It will always ask this in English no matter what language is selected. How can I change that?
To troubleshoot your issue further, and gather some additional details I'll go ahead and create a ticket for you.
Please check your email and we can continue from there.
Thank you and have a wonderful day ahead!
Kind regards,
This article is linked to from another about Messaging and Flow Builder, but I don't see anything in this article about flow builder and multi-lingual functionality?
Hi, CJ Johnson
The section in the originating article is about designing a bot-enabled flow, which is mostly managed in Flow Builder but has some settings outside of that tool. This article is about configuring language settings (including settings for multiple languages) for a flow, which is managed outside of Flow Builder but impacts how you might put your flow together.
Can you tell me what kind of information you were expecting to find here from the originating link? Maybe I can clarify things in the first article, or add relevant info to this one. Thanks!
Are there any plans for allowing multiple Bots per Brand? This would really fix our issue with not being able to add manual translations, as it would allow for individual language specific bot flows, without sacrificing Help Center articles (as each brand is linked to a Help center, so if one has two brands for two languages, there is no way to link both of them to a single help center)
Also there doesn’t seem to be a way to translate the opening times displayed within the widget and the text in the white chat bubble.
Seconding Shayan's suggestion! We desperately need either multiple bots per brand so that each of our translated sites can also use the bot, or we need the ability to use dynamic content in the flow builder. We have 3 translated versions of our English site and as of now, we can only use the bot on our English site since the German, French, and Japanese translations are not at all correct. Especially since parts of the flow builder still display in English (which makes no sense to me!?) I've seen it mentioned and asked quite a few times - but is this something that is possibly on the roadmap for future improvements, and if so, do we know when?
Following the last two comments of Shayan Moussawi and Alicia Schaefer we do need multiple Bots per Brand/Channel as well.
The use of automatic translation is fine, as long as we would only use standard phrases, but I would guess that every company uses specific phrases/words, where no translation is needed or only misleading.
Hi
In the messaging widget, how do we translate the:
Style Title
Style Description
Style Text
We have tried using Dynamic Content to replace the standard text in these fields but the DC content doesn't work. It just shows the DC placeholder. See below:
We have a number of languages and the Messaging Widget Title, Description and Text doesn't make sense to only be in English.
Dear Miranda Burford, for a Support operation that manage 7 languages, automated translation is just not right. You should see how such words are translated in other languages, they are not just inaccurate they are misleading.
First you impose an unreasonable pricing (1.000 MAU) for a product that is just not ready to replace chat, looks like that you are willing to do u-turn on the ridiculous price of the flow builder at last. Instead of focusing on the gap that the product has, let's make sure we have an unreasonable pricing first? Why don't we talk about the features that are missing?
Can you please respond to this simple question for my support organisation that manage multiple languages (7) and wants to use the flow builder? Automated translations is the answer?
How is it possible that you did not conceive dynamic content for messenger in the flow builder?
Opening statement:
Sorry but.... how can you inspire confidence in the user, when it's clear that we are presenting automated translations. This is everything but improved customer experience. Just say the truth, you simply forgot to consider Dynamic Content for the Flow Builder in Messaging and came up with patch of automated transitions.
Lisa Tam said that Zendesk will be bringing in the ability to customise the translations, overriding the system-generated translations in H1 2024. https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4411256171930-dynamic-content-in-Flow-Builder in H1 2024??? Really?
Miranda Burford for an organisation like us that provide support in 7 languages, the absence of Dynamic Content for the Flow Builder in Messaging and relying on inaccurate translations that require extreme precision in the terminology, automated translations are a blocker that will prevent us to launch Messaging in Q4 2023. I can show you some automated translation that will make a German say what is that??? So improved customer experience not equal to automated translations.
Do I need to create 7 flows for each language and ask which language they desire to be supported?
If it is true that you are pushing to Messaging, why dynamic content is not prioritised?
Every support organisation that provide support in more than 1 language is affected.
Hello Zendesk team and Aimee Spader Miranda Burford is the any response on how to solve the problem of automatic translations for customer support international teams?
First, relying on the language of the browser is not a solution, it is a patch. Determine the right language of the user if of fundamental to have good experience and to trust the bot.
What option do you have?
Example
With flow builder we have some cases where we want to redirect the user to a section on our own site, and managing multiple language means that you have to redirect to the correct URL: webite.com webite.co.uk, website.it website.es etc
So if I provide a URL (not a help center article) but a link to our website (webite.com webite.co.uk, website.it) in action of the flow builder, I won't be able redirect to a correct URL, as with the current set up you can only display 1 URL (the default english).
What is improvement planned to improve bots for companies that manage multi-language?
And also can you respond to my previous messages?
Would it not be a better option to rely on the language of the Help Center instead of the browser language? Unfortunately "branch conditions" does not take into account the language either of the user or of the help center.
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