Virtual Agent - Topic Name Translation [Workaround]

[Mark Roethof]

Articles, Blogs, Videos, Podcasts, Share projects - Experiences from the field

The issue described in this content, has been fixed by ServiceNow in the New York family release.

Hi there,

A short article about gained knowledge concerning the translation of Virtual Agent Topic names. Out-of-the-box, this does not seem to work as expected. It's even listed as a Problem, targeted to be fixed in New York, answer from Hi: no workaround available. Though, workaround... just read on 😀.

The Issue

When working for example with Catalog Items, you are used to easily to do translations by just switching the language from English to your desired language, update the Name, update variable Names, etc.. The translations are shown when switching between languages now, and instantly available for others. Doing something like this for Virtual Agent topic names... no go. 

Workaround

Following the below basic steps will provide a workaround for the Virtual Agent topic name translation.

1) First, switch your language from English to your desired language.
2) Within the Conversation Builder, update the name of the topic.

3) Notice that a new sys_translated_text record is generated once you save and publish the topic

4) Switch your language back to English.
5) Within the Conversation Builder, restore the name of the topic.
6) After saving and publishing the topic, have a look at the Virtual Agent in English and in your desired language... the translated topic name should be working now!

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And that's all!

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Kind regards,

Mark Roethof

ServiceNow Technical Consultant @ Paphos Group
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LinkedIn

[Dushyant2]

Hi Mark,

can you please help me, how can we translate boat and user response according to user language (French, Spanish, etc).

Thanks, 

[Mark Roethof]

Hi Dushyant,

This article is specific about a workaround on translating the Topic name. For other translations through the Virtual Agent topics I wrote another article which might help you:
Internationalize your Virtual Agent

If it's specific on text displayed by the bot itself, and not about text in topics, read this article I wrote:
Changing out-of-the-box Messages

If still having questions after that article, you could always post a question in the Virtual Agent and Natural Language Understanding (NLU) Community. Might I spot your question, I will answer. And else there are many other willing community members looking at your question 🙂

Kind regards,
Mark
2020 ServiceNow Community MVP
2020 ServiceNow Developer MVP

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LinkedIn
Community article list

[Sindhuja10]

Hi Mark,

Are you aware of how to translate the keywords used to identify the topic

Thanks,

Sindhuja

[Luiz Lucena]

Hi Sindhuja, 

Hope you may have found your answer already, but if not, I would try first to test if there is a translation already. 

For example, in my case, I just created a custom 'Live Agent Support' cloned from ootb.
But used the same topics keyword they have ootb. 

Then, I went to the language I wanted to test and try something in that language to ask for live agent and worked fine.

Hope that helps.

[Luiz Lucena]

Hi @Mark Roethof would you know if they really fixed this in New York. 

We are using Orlando and seems the issue still persists.

We are using some of the ootb topics and don't want to clone just to translate the topic name.

Thanks,

EDIT:
Found this KB to be helpful:
Virtual Agent - how to translate text for the Topic Name (title)