Feature referenceWebsite chat experience · 03 of 04

Website chat experience

Conversation language

A Stand-in can converse in more than 100 languages and follows the language the visitor is actually using. When the visitor clearly switches languages, the next Stand-in reply mirrors the switch and the widget changes its built-in interface language when that localization exists.

Availability
All plans
Configured in
Automatic in chat; fallback configured in Dashboard → Sites → site → Chat language
Category
Website chat experience
Reference status
Current
01

Languages a Stand-in can speak

The visitor does not need to select a language in advance or ask permission to switch. They can simply write in any of these supported languages:

  • Afrikaans
  • Albanian
  • Amharic
  • Arabic
  • Armenian
  • Assamese
  • Azerbaijani
  • Basque
  • Belarusian
  • Bengali
  • Bosnian
  • Bulgarian
  • Catalan
  • Cebuano
  • Chinese, Simplified and Traditional
  • Corsican
  • Croatian
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dhivehi
  • Dutch
  • English
  • Esperanto
  • Estonian
  • Filipino, Tagalog
  • Finnish
  • Frisian
  • French
  • Galician
  • Georgian
  • German
  • Greek
  • Gujarati
  • Haitian Creole
  • Hausa
  • Hawaiian
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Hmong
  • Hungarian
  • Icelandic
  • Igbo
  • Indonesian
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Javanese
  • Kannada
  • Kazakh
  • Khmer
  • Korean
  • Krio
  • Kurdish
  • Kyrgyz
  • Lao
  • Latin
  • Latvian
  • Lithuanian
  • Luxembourgish
  • Macedonian
  • Malagasy
  • Malay
  • Malayalam
  • Maltese
  • Maori
  • Marathi
  • Meiteilon, Manipuri
  • Mongolian
  • Myanmar, Burmese
  • Nepali
  • Norwegian
  • Nyanja, Chichewa
  • Odia, Oriya
  • Pashto
  • Persian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Punjabi
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Samoan
  • Scots Gaelic
  • Serbian
  • Sesotho
  • Shona
  • Sindhi
  • Sinhala, Sinhalese
  • Slovak
  • Slovenian
  • Somali
  • Spanish
  • Sundanese
  • Swahili
  • Swedish
  • Tajik
  • Tamil
  • Telugu
  • Thai
  • Turkish
  • Ukrainian
  • Urdu
  • Uyghur
  • Uzbek
  • Vietnamese
  • Welsh
  • Xhosa
  • Yiddish
  • Yoruba
  • Zulu
02

Languages supported by the widget interface

Stand has complete built-in widget copy in ten languages: English, Finnish, Swedish, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, and Estonian. Regional tags use the corresponding base-language interface—for example, Brazilian Portuguese uses Portuguese copy.

The translated surface includes composer labels; send, minimize, retry, new-message, end-conversation, and start-new-chat controls; connection and typing states; quota and unavailable messages; handoff and follow-up cards; and conversation-ended actions.

Visitor’s languageStand-in replyWidget controls and Stand-generated system copy
SpanishSpanishSpanish
PolishPolishEnglish fallback, because Polish UI copy is not yet built in
JapaneseJapaneseEnglish fallback, because Japanese UI copy is not yet built in
03

How Stand chooses the active language

Before the visitor writes, Stand uses browser, page, and Site hints to choose a sensible starting language. After visitor-authored text establishes a language, the visitor’s own messages become authoritative.

PrioritySignal
1The latest visitor message whose language can be identified confidently. A later clear switch replaces the earlier active language.
2The visitor’s ordered browser language preferences, then the browser’s primary language.
3The current page’s lang value.
4The Site’s owner-configured fallback language.
Final fallbackEnglish when none of the preceding signals provides a usable language tag.
Context onlyGreeting, private page context, Stand-in instructions, and knowledge-source language can inform the answer but do not override clear visitor-authored language.
04

Switching languages on the fly

Stand evaluates every visitor message before the Stand-in prepares its reply. When the newest message contains enough unambiguous language to establish a different language, Stand saves that language first, tells the Stand-in to answer entirely in it, and sends a language-change event to the widget. The reply and supported interface copy therefore switch together without requiring a language menu or an explicit request such as “Can we speak Spanish?”

Stand changes language conservatively. A short or ambiguous turn such as “OK,” a number, a URL, or a product name does not override the established language merely because a detector could guess. If several visitor messages arrive together, the last confidently identified language in that group guides the response.

SpeakerMessageWhat Stand does
Visitor“Toimitatteko tilauksia Ruotsiin?”Establishes Finnish. The Stand-in answers in Finnish and the widget uses Finnish controls.
Stand-in“Kyllä. Toimitamme tilauksia myös Ruotsiin.”The reply follows the visitor’s Finnish without translating the earlier transcript.
Visitor“How long does delivery usually take?”The visitor switches naturally to English. Stand records English before generating the next reply.
Stand-in“Delivery usually takes three to five business days.”The Stand-in mirrors English and the widget changes its built-in controls to English.
Visitor“¿Y puedo cambiar la dirección después de pagar?”The visitor switches again, this time to Spanish.
Stand-in“Sí, si el pedido todavía no se ha enviado.”The Stand-in and the supported widget interface both switch to Spanish.
05

Set the Site fallback language

Owners configure the fallback from Dashboard → Sites, expand the relevant Site, then open Chat language and choose Fallback language. Saving changes the starting fallback for future conversations on that Site; it does not force every visitor to remain in that language.

The setting is useful for a site whose intended audience is known but whose pages or browsers do not provide a reliable language hint. Leaving it unset allows the normal browser and page signals to lead.

06

When a visitor prefers another language

If the visitor uses a supported Stand-in language that is outside the ten widget localizations, Stand keeps the conversation in that language and falls back only the fixed interface and system copy to English.

If the visitor writes in a language outside the supported Stand-in list, Stand can still try to identify and mirror it, but response quality is not guaranteed. The widget interface falls back to English. A human rep can continue in any language they personally support, because Stand does not translate human-written messages.

07

Persistence and restoration

  • A confident visitor-language switch updates durable session state rather than changing only one reply.
  • The current language is saved with the local session pointer and also restored from the server when a conversation is reopened.
  • A restored conversation uses its established language instead of reverting to the browser’s current default.
  • A new conversation starts a new language decision and can use different visitor, page, or Site fallback signals.
08

Availability and permissions

  • Automatic conversation-language handling and localized widget controls are available on every plan.
  • Visitors do not choose a language from a Stand settings menu; their writing and browser or page signals drive the conversation.
  • Only an organization owner can change the Site fallback language.
  • AI replies require an eligible AI Stand-in; a human rep remains responsible for the language of messages they write.
09

Translation boundaries

  • Stand does not rewrite or translate earlier visitor or rep messages when the language changes.
  • Customer-authored stand-card content, page text, product names, and linked destination pages are not automatically translated by this setting.
  • Knowledge-source documents remain stored in their source language; the conversation language guides the AI response rather than creating translated source copies.
  • Human rep messages are not machine-translated before delivery.
  • The supported-language list describes intended Stand-in coverage, not guaranteed native-level fluency for every dialect, domain, or mixed-language sentence.