Language support for NLU services

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 1 minute to read

    • Entity extraction is supported on ServiceNow® NLU models for specific languages only. The remaining languages support intent matching only. If you are using IBM Watson Assistant, supported languages vary.

    You can see the list of currently supported languages in the Open NLU Driver Languages [open_nlu_driver_language] table.

    The VA NLU Languages [sys_cs_nlu_language] table lists the languages that are currently enabled in Virtual Agent.

    Note:
    If you choose a language that doesn't support full entity extraction, an error message appears.

    For unsupported language codes, you can specify a fallback language for NLU prediction. For example, if a user's language detected language is Mexican Spanish (es-mx), you can specify Spanish (es) as the fallback language, if it is enabled on your instance. For more information, see Specify a fallback language for locale-specific languages and NLU prediction. You can also enable Dynamic Translation for Virtual Agent. For details, see Using language detection and dynamic machine translation in Virtual Agent enhanced chat conversations.

    Note:
    This content focuses specifically on NLU language support. For more information on LLM language support for Now Assist in Virtual Agent, see Multilingual service for Now Assist.
    Table 1. Supported NLU languages
    Service Supported languages
    ServiceNow NLU For intent matching and entity recognition:
    • English
    • French
    • German
    • Japanese
    • Spanish

    For intent matching only:

    • English
    • Chinese (Simplified)
    • Danish
    • Dutch
    • Finnish
    • French
    • French (Canadian)
    • German
    • Italian
    • Japanese
    • Korean
    • Norwegian
    • Polish
    • Portuguese (Brazilian)
    • Spanish
    • Swedish
    IBM Watson Assistant
    • English
    • Chinese (Simplified)
    • Dutch
    • French
    • German
    • Italian
    • Japanese
    • Korean
    • Portuguese
    • Spanish
    Google Dialogflow ES
    • English
    • Chinese (Simplified)
    • Chinese (Traditional)
    • Dutch
    • Finnish
    • French
    • French (Canadian)
    • German
    • Italian
    • Japanese
    • Korean
    • Norwegian
    • Polish
    • Portuguese
    • Portuguese (Brazilian)
    • Russian
    • Spanish
    • Swedish
    • Thai
    • Turkish