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What is Auto-Translation?

Auto-translation lets agents reply in their own language while customers write in theirs. The customer never sees the translation seam.

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What is Auto-Translation?

Auto-translation lets your team handle conversations in any language without speaking it. An agent in Oslo can answer a customer in São Paulo without either of them noticing the translation seam. The customer writes Portuguese; the agent reads Norwegian; the agent replies Norwegian; the customer reads Portuguese.

It’s a tenant-level toggle (Enable translation, on the General tab of Settings → Translation) plus a per-user language preference (in Settings → Language) that decides which language each agent works in.

How a message flows

When auto-translation is on:

  1. Inbound — a customer message arrives. Atender stores the original message text and detects its language.
  2. Agent reads — when an agent views the conversation, Atender translates the message on demand into that viewer’s target language. English is the default target language. Agents who want to work in another language turn on View and reply in your primary language in Settings → Language, and then read in their primary language instead.
  3. Outbound — the agent composes in their own language and ticks Translate reply to (the conversation’s language) under the composer. The reply is translated as it is sent, and the customer receives the translated text; the agent’s own wording is kept alongside it. Leave that box unticked and the reply goes out exactly as written.
  4. Original preserved — the original text is preserved on the message. Atender uses messages.content_language to tell whether a row is a legacy English-canonical message or a newer original-language message, so the system knows what language the stored content is in before translating it for a viewer.

Reading is automatic; replying is not. The reply-translation checkbox starts unticked until an agent flips its Default: control to Translate, so the outbound half of the seam is opt-in per agent.

Primary vs secondary languages

Two of the fields in Settings → Language decide this:

  • Primary Language — the language the agent works in. Inbound messages get translated into it once the agent turns on View and reply in your primary language; without that toggle Atender translates into English instead. Outbound replies get composed in it and translated out when the agent ticks Translate reply to in the composer.
  • Secondary Languages — languages the agent reads natively. Messages in these languages are not translated; the agent sees the original.

So a German agent who also reads English would set primary = German and secondary = English. German customers come through in German (no translation, same language). English customers come through in English (untranslated — the agent reads English fine). Spanish customers come through translated to German.

Two translation systems, one product

Atender has two translation systems for two different jobs:

  • Auto-translation — Live customer conversations, in real time, message by message. — Settings → Translation + Settings → Language (per agent).
  • Knowledge Base translation — Full multi-language KB articles, with translation jobs and per-language overrides. — Settings → Knowledge, on the Languages tab.

Protected Terms live on the Protected Terms tab of Settings → Translation and can be enabled per module. Conversations use protected terms when the Conversations module toggle is enabled.

This article covers the conversation-side system. The KB system is more comprehensive and has its own controls; see the Knowledge Base documentation for that side.

When the agent wants to see the original

The original message is always preserved, even when the agent sees a translation. A small Show original toggle under each translated message switches between the translated and original text. Use it when:

  • The translation reads strangely and you want to verify
  • A product name or technical term might have been mistranslated
  • You partially read the source language and want to confirm

The toggle is conversation-wide, and there is one for each side of the thread: flipping it on a customer message reveals the originals of every customer message in that conversation, and likewise for the agent’s own messages. It doesn’t change what anyone else sees.

What’s required to use it

That’s all. There are no per-language packs to install, no per-customer settings to configure.

Where to start

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