Languages and localisation

A chatbot’s language is not one switch but three separate things. They are set separately because they affect different things at different moments: searching in Finnish and answering in Finnish are genuinely different problems.

Settings → Languages shows the state of all three at a glance.

1. Reply language

Two options:

• Automatic. The bot replies in the language the customer writes in.
• Always Finnish / Always English. The bot always replies in the chosen language, whatever the customer writes. The lock always wins.

In automatic mode the language is sticky: short filler like “ok”, “kiitos” or “thanks” does not switch the conversation. Only a clear, long enough message in another language does. This prevents the familiar annoyance of a bot hopping between languages mid-conversation.

When the language cannot be determined confidently, the bot does not guess — it uses Finnish.

What the reply language changes

The reply language is not a finishing layer. It changes several things at once:

• Finnish writing rules apply only to bots replying in Finnish.
• Form of address (informal or formal) applies to Finnish only.
• Suggested follow-up questions are written in the same language. On a locked bot they stay in the locked language even if the customer writes in another.
• Action-card instructions are in English only when the reply language is locked to English. In Automatic mode they remain Finnish rather than switching with each visitor message.

Finnish and English go deeper, other languages still work

The bot also replies in German, French or Spanish if the customer writes that way and the reply language is Automatic. The model mirrors the language, and search works because the embeddings are multilingual.

Finnish and English additionally get depth handling that other languages do not have yet: a deterministic language lock, inflection-aware keyword search, and Finnish number formatting. The lock (Always Finnish / Always English) therefore covers those two.

2. Widget interface language

This is the language of the widget’s own text: the send button, the menu, error messages. It is not the same thing as the reply language, and the two may freely differ.

The editor shows one list. Each row is a language the widget may display, and one of them is marked as the default:

The widget appears in the visitor’s browser language if it is on the list. Otherwise the default language is used.

The list itself is the permission to switch. If you want the widget always in Finnish, keep only Finnish on the list — browser detection then has nothing else to match.

There is no separate “automatic” option, because none is needed: the list already says which languages detection may resolve to.

Language switcher for visitors

A separate setting adds a language choice to the widget menu. It appears only once at least two languages are allowed. The visitor’s choice is remembered on later visits.

If you later remove a language a visitor had chosen, that visitor moves cleanly to the next allowed language.

Swedish

The Swedish interface translation is a draft pending native review and is not a production-support commitment. In all cases, it does not change the reply language or knowledge search.

3. Knowledge search language

Each source’s language is detected individually from its content during indexing. One bot can therefore serve a Finnish manual and an English price list, and search uses the right grammar rules for each.

This matters in practice: Finnish search understands inflected forms. A question about “verot” hits text that says “verotuksen määrä”.

If a source is detected as the wrong language, you can correct it from the source view in Knowledge. The correction re-indexes that source and survives a later re-crawl.

The fallback language for new sources (Settings → Languages) is used only when a source’s own language cannot be determined. It does not override detection or a manual correction.

What actually happens: examples

Reply language is Always English and the customer writes in Finnish

1. Search runs in Finnish. The search language comes from the question, not from the reply setting, so a Finnish question hits Finnish sources, inflections included.
2. The reply comes in English. The lock beats detection.
3. Follow-up questions are in English.
4. The widget interface does not change — that is its own axis.

The result: a Finnish knowledge base serves an international audience without translating the content. This is a supported combination, not a mistake.

Reply language is Automatic and the customer writes in German

The bot replies in German. Search leans on the multilingual embedding arm, because there is no inflection-aware keyword search for German. The answer is useful, but the Finnish and English depth handling does not apply to it.

The visitor’s browser is English and only Finnish is on the list

The widget interface appears in Finnish. The reply language is decided separately by its own setting.

A visitor switches the language from the menu

Only the interface changes. The reply language does not — a bot locked to Finnish keeps replying in Finnish even while the visitor reads an English interface.

When to change what