Automatic translation of incoming messages
Whenever a user sends a message in a language that is not listed as your operator language, Lokalise automatically translates it and displays the translated version in the conversation notes:
Sending a translated reply
Type your response in the conversation notes, starting with the exclamation sign (!) followed by the actual message, for example: !Hello, how are you doing?. Lokalise will translate this text into the conversation language and send it back to the user:
Non-translatable markup
If you'd like to mark a portion of your message as non-translatable, wrap it with the *** characters. Any text enclosed into these characters will be ignored during the translation process. This feature is very useful to ensure that names, technical terms, or specific phrases are not altered during the translation process.
Here are some examples:
!Part of the text ***do not translate*** -> Teil des Textes do not translate
!Part of the text ****** -> Teil des Textes ****** // empty wrapper should not affect anything
!Part of the text ******* -> Teil des Textes ******* // consecutive * symbols in a row will be passed to MT without changes
!Part of the text ***examp***@email.com*** -> Teil des Textes examp***@email.com
Please make sure that the *** wrapper is applied after all text highlighting: bold, italic, etc. If possible, it's better to avoid text highlighting for parts of text that are not supposed to be translated.
Please note that this feature is applicable only to the messages sent by the agents. If you need to prevent certain portions of incoming (customer) messages from being translated, you can take advantage of the Exclusion rules feature.
Sidebar widget
Installing the sidebar widget
On the right side of the screen, click Customize and add the Lokalise app:
You can type responses right in the Lokalise Inbox app, and these responses will get translated into the conversation language and sent back to the user:
Changing the conversation language via the sidebar widget
Neural networks that we are using to perform machine translation sometimes fail to understand the language of the message (for example, if it contains typos or content in several languages).
You can override chat language by clicking Change chat language in the Inbox app:
Alternatively, you can type the !lang command in the conversation notes, for example !lang de. You may need to refresh the page to see a new language in the sidebar widget if you have used the command.
Pausing chat translations via the sidebar widget
Use the sidebar widget to pause or resume translations for a particular conversation:
While paused Lokalise Messages won't translate anything and after resuming would translate only new replies.
You may need to refresh the page to see a change reflected in the sidebar widget if you have used the !pause or !resume command.
Available chat commands
!info — command shows the list of Lokalise Messages commands.
!lang code — change the language of the current conversation (supported codes). For example to change the language to German type !lang de.
!pause — pause translations for the current conversation.
!resume — resume previously paused translations in the current conversation. Only new messages will be translated.
!summarize — command would translate all previous message exchanges. It’s possible to limit the number of messages like this: !summarize 5 (this command would translate the five most recent messages).
!dashboard — get a one-time link to Dashboard where you can configure non-translatable languages, add specific terminology to the glossary and check the usage limits.
Translate previous messages
Use the !summarize chat command to request translation of the previous public messages sent by consumer and agent.
Further steps
Learn how to configure languages: globally, on per-team, and on per-agent basis
Learn how to override language providers: globally or on per-language basis
Learn how to exclude messages from translation: fully or partially
Learn how to use Lokalise Messages with chat bots (also known as "workflows")