Enable auto-translation for your tenant
Auto-translation is a tenant-wide setting. One person with the AI settings permission turns it on, and every agent on your team gets it the next time they refresh.
Before you start
- A role carrying the AI settings permission. Owner and Team lead have it by default; any custom role can be given it.
Steps
- Open Settings → Translation.
- On the General tab, toggle Enable translation on.
There is no Save button — the switch is written the moment you flip it.
The General tab is the whole of the auto-translation configuration: there are no per-language packs to install, no model selection, no per-channel toggles. The section’s other tab, Protected Terms, is a separate glossary feature that decides which words are left untranslated, and it applies to the Knowledge Base, forms and surveys as well as conversations.
Verify it worked
- The toggle stays on after the page reloads.
- Each agent on your team can now go to Settings → Language, configure their primary and secondary languages, and turn on View and reply in your primary language.
- Agents who turn on View and reply in your primary language see customer messages translated when they first view the conversation, not when the message is received.
- Agents who do not turn on View and reply in your primary language still view conversations in English by default.
- A customer message in a language different from the agent’s primary appears with a translation (and a toggle to see the original).
Next steps
Until each agent sets their Primary Language and turns on View and reply in your primary language in Settings → Language, conversations stay in English by default for that agent. Tell the team to:
- Open Settings → Language
- Pick a primary language they work in
- Turn on View and reply in your primary language
- Optionally add secondary languages they read natively (those won’t be translated)
- Click Save changes
Translations are created when an agent first views a conversation, not when each message is received.
Turning it off
Toggle the switch off. The translation UI disappears for every agent — conversations render their original text, with no translated rendition and no toggle — and inbound messages are no longer language-stamped or translated on view. Agents’ language preferences are preserved — flip the toggle back on later and everything resumes.
Platform-generated canned messages, including fallback or handover confirmations, may still be localized automatically based on the detected customer or channel language.
Troubleshooting
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Symptom: I turned it on but nothing translates. Fix: Each agent still needs to set a primary language and turn on View and reply in your primary language. Without those settings, conversations stay in English by default. See Set language preferences.
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Symptom: Some messages translate, others don’t. Fix: Messages already in the agent’s primary or secondary language pass through untranslated by design. Check the agent’s secondary languages in Settings → Language — if the source language is listed, that’s the cause.
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Symptom: I don’t see the Translation section in Settings. Fix: Your role doesn’t carry the AI settings permission, so the section is hidden. Ask someone whose role has it — an Owner, by default — to enable it.