Multi-Lingual Bots

Consumers are more likely to engage with your bot if it can communicate in their preferred language. Kore.ai Bots Platform supports enabling multiple languages for a bot without having to rebuild the bot definitions.

You can build the bot in your preferred language and then enable one or more supported languages. As part of enabling the language, the platform automatically translates all Standard Responses and you can then translate various other bot elements in the new language.

Supported Languages

Bots Platform currently supports the following languages. While most of the features are supported in all languages, there are some exceptions, see here for more details.

Default Language

You can choose a default language for the bot while creating it (see image below). Bot communicates with the user in the default language until the user’s language is identified. If the bot supports the user’s language, it switches to that language for the current or all of the following user sessions, depending on Bot’s Language settings.

Configuring/Enabling Languages

Enabling a supported language to a bot involves the following steps:

Step 1: Configure a new language

Follow these steps to enable a new language for the bot:

1. Open the bot for which you want to enable other languages.
2. Select the Build tab from the top menu.
3. From the left navigation menu select Configurations -> Languages.
4. From the Language Management page, click Add Language.
   
5. From the list of Supported Languages, next to the language you want to enable, click Configure.
   
6. Clicking Configure opens the Enable Language – <Language Name> dialog where you have two options to enable the selected language for the bot – duplicate an existing language pack or creating a new language pack, as explained in Step 2 below.

Step 2: Create a language-specific version of the bot

You can configure a new language for the bot in the following two ways:

Option 1: Duplicate the default language

If you want to configure the new language for the bot quickly and translate the bot elements incrementally, you can begin by copying the configuration of the default language for the new language. It replicates the bot definition for the configured language but continues to have all the bot elements in the default language, which you can translate from the application UI.

Follow these steps to create a new bot version by copying over the default language configurations:

1. On the Enable Language – <Language name> window, select Copy default language.
2. Click Enable at the bottom of the page. After a successful import, a prompt appears notifying that the new language bot is enabled.
   
3. After completing the previous steps, the bot definition gets created for the newly enabled language but the bot elements remain in the default language. You need to translate the bot elements from the UI.
4. Refer to the Translatable Bot Components section to view the complete list of bot elements for which you can add translations.

Option 2: Create a new language pack

You can create a translated version of the bot elements directly, perhaps with help from a language expert, by creating a JSON language pack for the enabled language.

You can download a JSON language pack of any of the already-enabled languages from the bot and then add translations in the JSON file.

Follow these steps to create a JSON language pack for the new enabled language:

1. On the Enable Language – <Language name> window, select Use <language-name> language configuration file option
2. From the Base Language Pack drop-down, select a language to download its language pack.
3. Click Download JSON.
4. The downloaded JSON file consists of various bot elements for which you should provide the translations. Refer to the Translatable Bot Components section to learn more about these bot elements.
5. To enter a translation for a bot element in the JSON file, replace the corresponding text with the translated text.
6. After customizing the downloaded JSON file for the new language, in the Enabling language pack field, click Choose File and upload the new language pack.
   
7. On the top-right corner of the window, click Enable. Upon successful import, the Import Successful window appears with the import results.
8. Click OK. Success prompt appears on the top-right corner of your screen.

• After you configured a new language, the status of all the published tasks that are modified to Enabled. To make the new language work in the bot, you must re-publish the bot. Until then, the bot continues to function with the previously published languages.
• Support for Synonyms is restricted to English, French, Spanish and German languages. The respective sections in Natural Language and Entity Node will be in a disabled state for other languages.

Step 3: Add or edit translations

After enabling a new language for the bot, you might need to add or edit translations on an ongoing basis. You can make these edits from the application UI, which is particularly helpful if you have created the bot version by copying over the default bot configurations. Editing from the UI also helps when you want to make minor edits.
Note: If you need to make significant changes to the language pack, we recommend you to make the changes in the offline copy of the language pack and then upload it to the bot. Refer to Editing and Re-uploading a language pack to learn how to do it.

To add or edit translations to a bot element from the UI, follow these steps:

1. On the top right corner of the bot window, click the current bot language.
2. From the drop-down list, select the bot language in which you want to make the changes.
   
3. Enter the language-specific text for the selected bot elements, just as you did for the default language.
   For example, if you want to add a bot synonym in the new language, follow these steps:
   1. From the left navigation under the Build tab, click Natural Language > Training > Bot Synonyms.
   2. From the list of keywords and synonyms, click the keyword for which you want to add the synonym.
   3. In the synonyms box, type the synonym (in the enabled language) and press enter.

Editing and Re-uploading a language pack

If you need to make major changes to the language pack, the recommended practice is to make the changes in the offline copy of the language pack and re-upload it to the bot.

To re-upload a language pack to a bot, follow these steps:

1. On the top right corner of the bot window, click the current bot language.
2. From the drop-down list, select the bot language in which you want to make the changes.
3. From the left navigation menu under the Build tab and click Configurations -> Languages.
4. The Language Management window opens displaying the disable/enable/configure actions against each language.
5. Click on any enabled/disabled language to open the Manage Language window.
6. From the Manage Language window click Choose File and upload the updated language pack.
7. Click Update to update the language pack.

Disabling/Enabling Language

Once you have configured and enabled a language you can:

• Disable or deactivate a language that is previously enabled for the bot. The actual language-specific data that has been added while enabling the language will continue to exist in the bot even after disabling the language. Disabling would prevent the users from talking  to the bot in that language (can be viewed in bot export copy)
• If a language is disabled you can enable it again, since the data is preserved you need not enter all the details.
• No changes can be made to the Default Language, ie the language selected while creating the bot.

NOTE: Any change in language settings, needs to be published before it can take effect in the published bot.

Language Detection and Selection

Multilingual bots auto-detect and switch language based on the user’s utterance. An exception to this rule is when the user is expected to enter a value against an entity and the user input satisfies that entity’s criteria.

Language Detection

There are three ways a bot can detect the language based upon the user utterance:

• By Default: Kore.ai Bots platform uses its own language detection algorithm to detect language from the user utterance. This is the default setting and the end user’s language will be detected by the platform.
• For on-prem installation, you can go with the above-mentioned default setting of Kore.ai’s in-house language detection algorithm or use Google APIs for language detections. You can set it in the Kore Config file.
• If you are using BotKit SDK, you may also send the following cheat command from your BotKit to the platform:

  cheat language <language name or code>

The bot continues to communicate with the user in the same language. If the user switches to another enabled language anytime later, the bot changes to the new language automatically.

If the bot fails to detect a user’s language with high confidence, it requests the user to select a preferred language from the list of enabled options.

Language Selection Logic for Bot Users

1. Bot identifies user language from every utterance. In case a change is detected, it will get a confirmation from the user regarding the switch and proceeds as per the user response.  These standard responses can be customized using the getCurrentOptions utility, see here for more. Note that the current conversation will be discarded in case the user wants to switch languages.
2. Language selection settings – In addition, you may want to configure the language selection options. From the menu under the Build tab, click Configurations -> Languages. Under Language Selection Logic (scroll down for the option), for language selection time frame, set to one of the following:
   • Lifetime: The auto-detected language will be set as the user’s preferred language and used for all subsequent communications until the user interacts in another enabled language anytime later. If the user starts to talk in another enabled language, the bot changes to that language.
   • Per Session: Detects the user’s language at the beginning of every session and responds accordingly.
   • Every User Message: Identifies the user’s language from every utterance. In case a change is detected, will get a confirmation from the user regarding the switch and proceeds as per the user response. Note that the current conversation will be discarded in case the user wants to switch languages. This feature was introduced in release 7.2 and is the default setting for multi-lingual bots.

   

3. For testing and debugging purposes, you can override the language selection settings by using the cheat command during a chat session:
   Replace the language name or code with one of these values:
   • English: English or EN
   • German: German or DE
   • French: French or FR
   • Spanish: Spanish or ES

Translatable Components

This section lists the bot elements for which you can provide translations, along with their JSON properties. You can also translate these elements from the application UI. Refer to the help links added across the article to get an overview of the relevant topic areas.

Bot Metadata

JSON object consisting of the following translatable elements

Dialog Tasks

JSON object consisting of the following translatable components of your bot’s Dialog Tasks.

Dialog Components

JSON object consisting of the following translatable components related to the NLP settings of a dialog task.

Message Templates

JSON object with arrays of Message Template IDs and Message Template Text values. They correspond to the User Responses field in the Message node and the Bot Prompts and Error Prompts fields in the Entity node of the dialog tasks.

Action Task

JSON object consisting of the following translatable components of your bot’s Action Tasks.

Alert Task

JSON object consisting of the following translatable components of your bot’s Alert Tasks.

Action Fields

JSON object consisting of the following translatable components in the API Request tab of the Action task.

Alert Fields

JSON object consisting of the following translatable components in the API Request tab of the Alert task.

Bot Filters

JSON object consisting of the following translatable components related to Bot filters

IDP Config Form Fields

JSON object consisting of the following translatable components related to IDP configuration form