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Offer the widget in several languages

Let visitors pick their language, and translate your articles, forms and interface text.

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The widget can switch languages for visitors, and your agent replies in the language they write in. Here's what is translated, and where you set it up.

What gets translated#

PartHow it's translated
Widget interface (buttons, labels, tabs)Built in for English, French, Arabic, Spanish and Hebrew. Change the wording, or add other languages, under Interface text
Agent repliesAutomatically, in the language the visitor writes in. When a message is too short to tell, the agent keeps the language of earlier messages, or uses the widget's language
Help articles and newsAdd a translated Title, Description and Body to each content item
FormsAdd a translated Title, Description and Submit button, and each question's Label, Placeholder, Helper text and Options
Collection namesAdd a translated Title and Description to each collection
Welcome messages and suggested repliesNot translated. They show as you wrote them, in every language

Untranslated article, collection and form fields fall back to your default language, field by field. Untranslated interface text uses the widget's built-in text, which is English for languages that aren't built in.

Turn on more languages#

  1. Open the deployment and go to the Chat widget tab.
  2. Under Languages, choose the Languages.
  3. Choose a Default language, shown before a visitor picks one. Auto (browser language) follows each visitor's browser.
  4. To ignore visitors' browser languages, set Always use (optional) to one language. It's Not forced by default.
  5. Select Save changes.

With two or more languages, visitors get a Language row in the chat's ⋯ menu. Keep Language on under Header buttons.

The languages you can choose come from your workspace's language settings: English, French, Spanish, Arabic and Hebrew by default. If one you need is missing, contact the help.ai team.

Change the interface text#

Once you've chosen languages, Interface text appears below them. Switch to a language and fill in the words you want to change. They're grouped as Launcher & panel, Home, Tabs, Help & News and Forms & actions. Blank fields use the widget's built-in text.

This also works with a single language, for example to reword the message box placeholder.

How the widget picks a language#

  1. The language the visitor picked in the widget. It's remembered for their next visit.
  2. A language your website sets when it loads the widget.
  3. The deployment's Always use language, if set.
  4. The Default language, or the visitor's browser language when it's Auto (browser language).

If that language isn't one of the deployment's Languages, the widget uses the Default language, or else the first language in the list. Arabic, Hebrew and other right-to-left languages, such as Persian and Urdu, display right to left automatically.

Translate your most-read articles first. Analytics → Content shows which ones visitors open most.

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