FAQ — Translation isn’t working
When an agent reports that translation isn’t happening, walk this list top to bottom.
1. Is auto-translation enabled at the tenant level?
Open Settings → Translation. The toggle has to be on. If it’s off, no message in the entire tenant gets translated, regardless of any agent’s language preferences.
This requires admin access. If you’re not an admin, ask one to check.
2. Has the agent set a primary language?
Open Settings → Language. Without a primary language, there’s no target to translate inbound messages into for that agent — the system has nothing to translate to.
This is the most common cause of “I enabled translation but nothing happens.”
3. Is the source language one of the agent’s secondary languages?
Secondary languages pass through untranslated by design — that’s the whole point of listing them. If the agent set Norwegian as a secondary language and Norwegian customers come through untranslated, the system is working correctly.
If the agent doesn’t actually read the language they listed as secondary, remove it from the secondary list.
4. Did language detection get it wrong?
Atender auto-detects the source language. Mixed-language messages, short replies (“ok!”, “ty”), or messages that are mostly emoji can be detected wrong. Toggle to view the original on the message — if the original is what you’d expect, but the detected language was wrong, that’s the cause.
For consistently misdetected customers, flag a representative message via the response-flagging mechanism.
5. Is this a Knowledge Base article or a conversation message?
Auto-translation handles live conversation messages. KB articles use a separate translation system (translation jobs, protected terms, per-language overrides). If the article isn’t appearing in the customer’s language on your help center, the issue is on the KB side, not auto-translation.
When to escalate
If all five items check out and translation still isn’t happening on a specific message, capture:
- The conversation ID
- The agent’s primary and secondary languages
- The message that didn’t translate (or its ID)
- The detected source language Atender shows
Share that with your Atender support contact. Auto-translation issues are usually one of the five items above; the rare exceptions need data from a real example to diagnose.