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Language Support in HALO

By default, HALO automatically answers your users in their own language. It can detect 89 languages and respond to the user in that detected language. You also have several options to influence HALO’s language behaviour yourself.

This page explains how HALO picks the language and how you can influence it.

Not all language behaviour works the same for text and voice conversations. Each section below explains for which mode the information applies.

Default language

The default language applies to text and voice conversations. It is the base language of your HALO profile. HALO uses it for its welcome messages and as a fallback for language detection when a conversation is too short or ambiguous. To set the default language, open your Persona and pick the Default language on the Identity tab.

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Language detection

Language detection applies to text conversations. HALO automatically detects the language of every customer message from 89 languages, and replies in that detected language. In voice calls, automatic language detection is not available. See Voice configuration.

Set language step

You can influence the language of HALO directly with the Set language step, which works for both text and voice conversations. With Keep this language turned on, automatic language detection stays off for the rest of the conversation. With it off, HALO detects the language again on the customer's next message. The language you set is used by your agents that are configured to do so, and for the output of all your tools. The Set language step lets you choose either a language or a language with a locale. Adding a locale gives you control over the specific regional variant of that language.

For voice conversations without automatic detection, the Set language step can be especially useful, for example for setting a specific language locale, or for IVR flows.

Agents

Your agents have the setting Apply tone of voice and automatic translations, which is turned on by default. When it is on, HALO makes sure the agent answers in the conversation language and in the tone of voice of your profile. It only has an effect in text conversations.

You can also turn off this setting, which means the agent decides for itself in which language to answer.

If you turn off this setting, make sure to mention in your agent prompt which language the agent should answer in.

Tools

Some tool steps send a message directly to the customer, for example an Ask user step or the goodbye message of a Handover step. HALO automatically translates these messages to the language of the conversation.

The translation of tool outputs always happens, for both text and voice conversations. To directly control which language your tools answer in, use the Set language step.

Web Conversations

When integrating HALO through Web Conversations, you have several options to influence the language behaviour of HALO:

  • You can override the default language of your HALO profile per Web Conversations configuration, by setting the Default Language property.

  • You can limit the number of languages HALO can detect through the Allowed Languages section.

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Voice configuration

To influence the language HALO speaks in voice conversations, you can adjust your number configuration in CM Voice management. There, you can link a specific phone number to a specific HALO profile with a specific language:

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More language settings can be configured on the Voice tab in Persona:

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Automatic language detection is disabled for voice calls. Without language detection, the language HALO speaks only comes from your configuration and the Set language step.

Supported languages

HALO can detect and answer in these 89 languages:

  • Afrikaans af

  • Albanian sq

  • Amharic am

  • Arabic ar

  • Armenian hy

  • Assamese as

  • Azerbaijani az

  • Basque eu

  • Bengali bn

  • Bosnian bs

  • Bulgarian bg

  • Burmese my

  • Catalan ca

  • Chinese zh

  • Croatian hr

  • Czech cs

  • Danish da

  • Dutch nl

  • English en

  • Estonian et

  • Filipino fil

  • Finnish fi

  • French fr

  • Galician gl

  • Ganda lg

  • Georgian ka

  • German de

  • Greek el

  • Gujarati gu

  • Hebrew he

  • Hindi hi

  • Hungarian hu

  • Icelandic is

  • Indonesian id

  • Inuktitut iu

  • Irish ga

  • Italian it

  • Japanese ja

  • Javanese jv

  • Kannada kn

  • Kazakh kk

  • Khmer km

  • Korean ko

  • Kurdish ku

  • Lao lo

  • Latvian lv

  • Lithuanian lt

  • Macedonian mk

  • Malay ms

  • Malayalam ml

  • Maltese mt

  • Marathi mr

  • Mongolian mn

  • Nepali ne

  • Norwegian Bokmål nb

  • Odia or

  • Pashto ps

  • Persian fa

  • Polish pl

  • Portuguese pt

  • Punjabi pa

  • Romanian ro

  • Russian ru

  • Serbian sr

  • Sinhala si

  • Slovak sk

  • Slovenian sl

  • Somali so

  • Southern Ndebele nr

  • Southern Sotho st

  • Spanish es

  • Sundanese su

  • Swahili sw

  • Swati ss

  • Swedish sv

  • Tamil ta

  • Telugu te

  • Thai th

  • Tsonga ts

  • Tswana tn

  • Turkish tr

  • Ukrainian uk

  • Urdu ur

  • Uzbek uz

  • Venda ve

  • Vietnamese vi

  • Welsh cy

  • Xhosa xh

  • Zulu zu

Next to these languages, HALO also supports regional variants (locales), such as nl-BE for Dutch in Belgium. These can be especially beneficial for voice conversations, and can be controlled via the Voice tab in Persona, or via the Set language step.