Internationalization support

Release version: Australia

Updated May 29, 2026

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Summary of Internationalization support

AI Search in ServiceNow supports indexing and searching across all languages available on the ServiceNow AI Platform®. This enables organizations to deliver effective search experiences in multiple languages by configuring search features tailored to the languages activated in their instances.

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Search features

Search administrators can leverage a comprehensive set of AI Search features that vary by language. These features include language identification, lemma and Unicode normalization, result improvement rules, stop words, synonyms, and typo handling. The level of linguistic processing adapts to each language’s characteristics, such as algorithmic stemming for Finnish, decompounding for Germanic languages, and specialized text-region and search-term identification for East Asian languages like Japanese and Chinese.

Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Dutch, English, French (including Canadian French), Hebrew, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Turkish: Full feature set including Genius Results and typo handling.
Finnish: Similar features with algorithmic stemming for lemma identification.
German, Danish, Hungarian, Norwegian Bokmål, Swedish: Features include decompounding in normalization.
Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese: Advanced language identification and normalization specific to text region and search terms.
Korean: Includes decompounding in normalization.
Other AI Platform languages: Provide Unicode normalization, result improvement rules, stop words, and synonyms without more advanced linguistic processing.

Translated content search

By default, AI Search returns results only for records translated into the user’s current session language. However, administrators can modify this behavior to enhance multilingual search capabilities:

Assign Knowledge article search languages by country: Users’ searches can match articles in any language associated with their country, in addition to their session language.
Configure globally searchable knowledge articles: Define encoded queries to make specific knowledge articles searchable across all session languages.
Configure fallback languages: Set fallback languages or a global fallback locale so searches also return translated content from these fallback languages, improving content accessibility.

Note: The global fallback locale is particularly effective for making English-language content universally searchable in multilingual environments.

AI Search supports indexing and search for all languages offered by the ServiceNow AI Platform®. Search administrators can configure AI Search search features for languages activated in your instance.

For full details on language support in AI Search search features, see Internationalization support for AI Search.

Search features

The following table displays the set of AI Search search features available for specific ServiceNow AI Platform languages.

Table 1. Search features supported by language
Language	Search features supported
Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, French - Canada, Italian, Polish, and Spanish	Genius Results Language identification Lemma and Unicode normalization Result improvement rules Stop words Synonyms Typo handling
Finnish	Genius Results Language identification Lemma and Unicode normalization (using algorithmic stemming to identify lemmas) Result improvement rules Stop words Synonyms Typo handling
German, Norwegian (Bokmål), and Swedish	Genius Results Language identification Lemma and Unicode normalization (including decompounding) Result improvement rules Stop words Synonyms Typo handling
Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese	Language identification (including text-region and search-term identification) Lemma and Unicode normalization Result improvement rules Stop words Synonyms
Korean	Genius Results Language identification Lemma and Unicode normalization (including decompounding) Result improvement rules Stop words Synonyms
All other ServiceNow AI Platform languages activated in your instance	Unicode normalization Result improvement rules Stop words Synonyms

Translated content search

By default, AI Search only returns results for records with translated content, such as knowledge articles, that are in the user's ServiceNow AI Platform session language. You can modify this default behavior in several ways:

Assign Knowledge article search languages by country: Improve multilingual search recall by defining a set of Knowledge article search languages for each user country. User searches can match Knowledge articles in any of the search languages specified for their country as well as in the language associated with their ServiceNow AI Platform session.
Configure globally searchable knowledge articles: Define an encoded query to match knowledge articles that you want to make searchable regardless of the user's session language.
Configure a fallback language: Set a fallback language for the user's session language. AI Search returns translated content results from the selected fallback language as well as the user's session language.
Enable a global fallback locale for translated content: Configure a global fallback locale to use for all translated content searches. AI Search returns translated content results from the global fallback locale's language as well as the user's session language.
Note:
The global fallback locale works best if you want to make all English-language records globally searchable.