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Multilingual

Lindsay Kregersen
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Overview

Communicating with your customers in their preferred language makes them feel like a VIP. Ada lets you do just that! Use your bot's multilingual functionality to provide that VIP experience to each of your customers.

There are two translation methods available to you:

  • Automatic translation – Uses the Google Translate API. This is the default translation system for your bot.
  • Custom translation – Manually add your own message translations. Adding a custom translation to an Answer overrides automatic translation for that Answer.

Requirements

  • Your bot must have Ada’s multilingual feature activated.

Frequently asked questions

Does Ada support right-to-left-languages?

Yes. For right-to-left languages that are supported, the chat is tailored for the best chatter experience. This includes flipped chat components such as settings, Quick Replies, loading bar, etc. The team is working on support for Widget App blocks in a future release. Check the Supported languages list for languages that are currently available.

Supported languages

Ada’s multilingual functionality supports the following languages:

Arabic German Norwegian
Belarusian Greek Polish
Bulgarian Haitian Creole Portuguese
Burmese Hindi Punjabi
Czech Hebrew Romanian
Chinese (Simplified) Hungarian Russian
Chinese (Traditional) Icelandic Slovak
Croatian Indonesian Slovenian
Danish Italian Spanish
Dutch Japanese Swedish
English Khmer Tamil
Estonian Korean Thai
Filipino (Tagalog)
 Latvian Turkish
Finnish Lithuanian Ukrainian
French Malay Vietnamese
     

Activate translations

To enable multilingual functionality:

  1. On the Ada dashboard, go to Settings > Bot Setup > Multilingual.
  2. Select the language(s) you want your bot to support.
  3. Click the toggle to activate Automatic Translation.

Enable only the languages you need

Tempted to enable all languages under the sun? Hold off! Consider the following:

  • Agents will find it difficult to provide support to chatters who are handed off in a language they don’t speak.
  • It's recommended to have people on your team who speak any of the languages you enable. They can review the bot Answers and identify opportunities to add custom translations where necessary.

Automatic translations

With automatic translation activated, your bot will:

  1. Determine the language of the chat.
  2. Pass the chatter’s text through the Google Translate API and translate it into English.
  3. Compare the English translation of the chatter’s text with all of the bot’s training.
  4. Identify the best Answer to provide to the chatter. If it locates an exact match, then it provides the Answer to which the exact match has been trained. If it can't find an exact match, it uses natural language processing to search further.
  5. Provide the translated Answer content to the chatter.
    • If custom translations are present, they are provided to the chatter.
    • If custom translations are not present, the bot translates the Answer’s content from English to the chat language using the Google Translate API.

You can rely on automatic translations for most scenarios; however, Answers containing brand names, idioms, slang, industry-specific terminology, etc., might result in some interesting translation results. For these Answers, it's highly recommended that you create custom translations to ensure that you get your message across as intended.

Set your bot’s default language

The default language is the language your bot starts chats in. Think of it like the bot’s mother tongue or first language. The default language for all new Ada bots is English. If most of your customers speak the same non-English language, you can choose to set that language as your bot’s default.

Ada's multilingual support gives you the ability to set your bot's default language to match the language of your chatters. Your bot will automatically begin the conversation in this default language.

The chatter can still change the chat language to English or any other enabled language, but the conversation starts in the default language.

Add the language script to Embed2

You can change the bot’s default language by making a small addition to the Ada Embed2 script. You might already be familiar with it, but if you need a refresher, check out our Embed2 documentation.

Let’s take a look at how to set up a bot’s default language to French. When defining your bot’s default language use the language format codes from the ISO 639-1 language format.

<!-- <head> -->
<script
  id="__ada"
  data-handle="yourbothandle"
  src="https://static.ada.support/embed2.js"
></script>

To set the bot language, add the following window.adaSettings snippet between the head and the script of the basic Ada Embed2 script.

 <script>
      window.adaSettings = {
        language: "fr",
      }
    </script>

Your revised Ada Embed2 script will look similar to this:

<!-- <head> -->
 <script>
      window.adaSettings = {
        language: "fr",
      }
    </script>

<script
  id="__ada"
  data-handle="yourbothandle"
  src="https://static.ada.support/embed2.js"
></script>

Expected behavior

Once you configure the default language in the Ada Embed2 script the bot automatically initiates all conversations in this language. The chatter can still change the language by:

  • Typing a message of a minimum of 45 characters in an enabled language.
  • Typing the exact name of an enabled language (ex. French or Français) into the chat field.
  • Selecting a language in the chat window settings.

Determine the language of the chat

The bot adheres to an order of operations when determining the chat language. It proceeds sequentially through the following criteria and determines the opening language:

  1. Embed2 - If the Embed2 script defines a default language, the bot will always launch in that language. If the language is not set in the Embed2 script, it moves on to check the chatter’s browser language.
  2. Browser - The bot launches in the chatter’s browser language If the bot cannot detect the chatter’s browser language, it launches in English.
  3. English - If neither a default language is defined in the Embed2 script, nor can a browser language be detected, the bot launches in English.
  ❗️ Important: Regardless of how the language is set, your bot can use only the languages you’ve enabled in Settings > Bot Setup > Multilingual > Supported Languages. Be sure to select each language you want to make available in your bot.

The order of operations above determines what language the bot begins the chat in. The chatter can change the language using one of the following methods:

  • Autodetect - If a chatter types a message of at least 3 words and 20 characters in an enabled language, the bot will try to identify the language and change the language of the chat.
  • Language Name - If a chatter types the exact name of an enabled language (ex. French or Français) into the chat field, the bot will change the chat language accordingly. This must be an exact match — typos or the name of the language within a longer message (ex. "Do you speak French?") will not trigger a language change.
  • Chat Window Settings - The chatter can click the three dots to access the chat window settings. They can then click Change language and select a language. This list is populated from the languages that have been enabled in Settings > Multilingual > Supported Languages.

Custom translations

The Google Translate API may struggle with brand names, idioms, slang, and industry-specific terminology. That's where custom translations come in! Ensure your message is not lost in translation by adding custom translations.

When you include custom translations, the bot overrides the Google Translate API and provides your custom translations instead!

Add a custom translation to an Answer

To add a custom translation to an Answer:

  1. In the Answer editor, click the 🌐 Add button.
  2. Select the language you want to translate. This list is populated from the enabled languages in Settings > Bot Setup > Multilingual > Supported Languages.
  3. After you select the language, it's added to the Answer. The new language tab contains a duplicate of the English tab’s content. Replace each block’s content with your custom translations.
  4. Click Save.

Remove a custom translation from an Answer

To delete a custom translation from an Answer:

  1. In the Answer editor, click the language tab you want to delete.
  2. Click Delete in the bottom right corner.

Translate Quick Reply buttons

Quick Reply buttons can be added to the bottom of an Answer. They act as links that trigger other Answers when selected by a chatter.

You can rely on automatic translations for Quick Reply button text or add custom translations if you prefer. The table below shows how these button titles will be translated depending on the Answer’s settings.

Answer Label custom translation provided? English Answer Label provided? Quick Reply button text
Yes N/A Answer Label custom translation
No Yes Answer Label automatic translation
No No Answer Title automatic translation

Quick Reply button text is automatically translated unless a custom translation is provided. To add a custom translation for a Quick Reply button:

  1. In the Answer editor, click Options > Answer settings.
  2. Click the 🌐 Add button.
  3. Select the language you want to translate the Answer Label to. This list is populated from the languages that have been enabled in Settings > Bot Setup > Multilingual > Supported Languages.
  4. After you select the language, an additional Answer Label field appears. Input the custom translation for this Answer’s Quick Reply button.
  5. Click Save.

Always include English Answer content

At this stage, you may be thinking, "Most of my customers will speak to the bot in a language other than English. I won't even bother populating content in the default English tab." This is not recommended. English is the foundation for all Ada bots. Because of this, Ada enables English by default for all bots. You cannot disable English. It will always be an option in your bot.

As unlikely as you think it is, consider the experience of a chatter who selects English. If you haven't provided Answer content in the English tab they will have a horrible experience. Populate the English tabs for each Answer to ensure all of your customers have a delightful experience.

Training considerations for multilingual bots

English is the foundation for all Ada bots. This is why you should only train your Answers with English training questions. All non-English chatter messages are run through Google Translate, translated into English, and then compared to your bot’s training content. Never train your bot with non-English content.

 

 

Have any questions? Contact your Ada team—or email us at help@ada.support.

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