Automatic translation of incoming messages

Whenever a customer sends a message in a language that is not listed as your agent language, Lokalise will automatically translate it and display a translated version in the internal notes:

Sending a translated reply

Type your response in the internal 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 customer:

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

Type responses right in the Lokalise Inbox app, and these responses will get translated into the conversation language and sent back to the customer:

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).

To override chat language, click on the cog icon (⚙️) > select a different Conversation language > click Save in the sidebar widget:

Available chat commands

!info — command shows the Lokalise Messages features.

!lang code — changes the language of the current conversation (supported codes). For example, to change the language to German type !lang de.

!pause — pauses translations for the current conversation.

!resume — resumes 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.

Known limitations

Translations are not sent to tickets when ticket status is changed to Solved or Closed.
Side conversations are not supported.
Translations sent from the sidebar won't preserve any markup.

Using Dynamic Content

Lokalise Messages supports the use of Zendesk’s dynamic content and its translated variants. Zendesk imports dynamic content depending on an end user’s defined language and the existence of a matching localized variant of the dynamic content. If there is no dynamic content variant for the end user's defined language, Zendesk will import the dynamic content's default language.

Detected language by Lokalise Messages and Zendesk should match

When a placeholder (EX: {{dc.dynamic_content_example}}) is used to import dynamic content via an internal response beginning with an !, that dynamic content will appear in the language that Zendesk has set for the end user if a matching variant for that dynamic content exists.

Using dynamic content that has a translated variant works well

If Zendesk Support and Lokalise Messages define the end user's language to the same language, and the specified dynamic content has an existing language variant, the matching dynamic content variant will be used and Lokalise will not translate it since it is already in the target language. This is true for the responding via the Lokalise Messages sidebar widget and via internal notes.

Using dynamic content that does not have a translated variant works well

If dynamic content is in a different language other than Lokalise Messages' set conversation language (target language), Lokalise Messages will translate the imported text into the target language only when the dynamic content is imported within an internal note that begins with an !.

Dynamic content imported by using a placeholder in the Lokalise Messages sidebar widget will not be translated. It will appear in the content’s default language.

Using macros that contain dynamic content works well

When using dynamic content together with Zendesk’s macros, Zendesk Support will import the content as text, not as a placeholder, into the support response. So agents can import any macro into an internal note starting with an ! to translate dynamic content.