Multilingual chatbot
A multilingual chatbot answers each visitor in the language they wrote in. Bots used to need a separate script for every language, each translated by hand. One built on a language model can read documentation in English and reply in Spanish, German or Japanese. Deacon writes every reply in the language of the visitor’s latest message, whatever language your content is in. The words built into the chat, such as Ask AI, stay in English, and your own replies go out as you typed them.
On every plan, including the free one.
At a glance
| What it means | One chatbot that replies in whatever language the visitor writes in, with no separate bot for each. |
|---|---|
| Which languages | There is no fixed list. Deacon replies in any language its model can write, and it is at its best in the widely written ones. |
| Your docs | Any language. A question in Spanish is answered from English docs, and the other way round. |
| What Deacon writes in the visitor’s language | Answers, clarifying questions, and the message that says it doesn’t have the answer. |
| What stays in English | The panel’s fixed words, such as Ask AI and the prompt for an email address, the line that says a chat has been handed back to the AI, and the reply a visitor gets on the rare turn Deacon doesn’t write, such as once a month’s answers are spent. |
| Reading a chat you can’t read | Translate turns a whole conversation into your browser’s language with one click. |
| Your own replies | They reach the visitor as you wrote them. Deacon doesn’t translate them. |
| Plans | All plans, and an answer counts the same in any language. |
How it works in Deacon
A visitor writes in their own language
There is nothing to switch on and no language to choose. Deacon reads the visitor’s message, looks up what your content says about it, and writes the reply in the language the visitor used. Your docs can be in English throughout. If the visitor changes language halfway through, Deacon follows the latest message. The link under an answer still goes to your page as you wrote it.
You read it in yours
Open the conversation in the dashboard and press Translate. Every line, the visitor’s and Deacon’s, is turned into your browser’s language, and a switch takes you back to the original. The translation is kept, so the conversation opens translated next time, and only new lines are translated when you press again. Translating is never counted as an answer. The button is offered only when a conversation isn’t already in your language.
You see which languages arrive
Analytics has a Languages card that lists each language your visitors wrote in, with the number of messages and the share of the total, and each one opens its conversations. Once enough questions have come in, a line compares how often Deacon had no answer in English with how often it had none in the other languages. The card only appears once someone has written in a language other than English. Topics group the same question across languages, under a name in English.
Replies in the visitor’s language are on every plan
Install Deacon, then ask it a question in another language and read the reply. You get 50 answers a month on the free plan, and it needs no card.
What to decide before you support customers in more than one language
A bot can start answering in a new language overnight. The decisions around it are slower, and they are the same whichever tool you use.
Who replies when the bot hands over?
A bot can answer in Portuguese at three in the morning, and you may not be able to. Decide what a visitor is told at that point, and in which language a person will reply. A reply in English is fine if you said so up front.
Which languages are arriving?
Look before you translate anything. Your analytics will show which languages visitors write in, and two of them may account for nearly all the questions that aren’t in English.
Whether to translate your docs at all
A bot built on a language model can read docs in one language and answer in another, so translation is no longer the first job. Translate a page when people need to read it for themselves, such as your terms, your pricing and your setup guide.
What stays in its original language
Button names, menu paths and plan names should appear as they do in your product. “Settings, then Billing” helps nobody if their screen says something else. Check a few answers in each language for this.
Legal and money
Refund terms, contracts and anything a customer could hold you to should be translated by a person. The alternative is to keep them in one language and say so beside them.
Questions about languages
There is no list to check against. Deacon writes in the language of the visitor’s message, and how well it writes depends on the model behind it, which is strongest in widely written languages such as Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Japanese. Test the ones you care about in the Playground, where chats are never counted.
No. Deacon reads your content in the language it is in and replies in the visitor’s. If your site already has translated sections such as /fr/, a crawl skips them so the same page isn’t read twice. You can still add one of those pages as a single link.
No. Its fixed words are in English. That covers the Ask AI placeholder, the prompt that asks for an email address and the notice that a chat has ended. The same goes for the reply on a turn Deacon doesn’t write, such as once your month’s answers are spent. The greeting is yours to write in any language, but every visitor sees the same one.
You can read it with Translate. Your reply is sent as you typed it, so write in the visitor’s language if you can, or say that the team replies in English. How human handoff works
Not with Deacon. No plan charges for languages, and the free plan replies in the visitor’s language like the others.
Yes. Deacon follows the language of the latest message, so a visitor who starts in English and carries on in French is answered in French from then on.
Try it in another language
It takes about five minutes to install. The free plan is 50 answers a month, for as long as you like.