Why isn't my reply being translated in a ticket?

Question

When I translate ticket interactions, the end user’s replies translate but my agent replies don’t. Why don’t my replies translate?

Answer

Live translation works when you press Translate in a ticket. It supports these channels:

Live chat

Social channels

Sunshine Conversations channels

Zendesk messaging

Auto-translated messages are messages that the system translates at send time, without the agent selecting Translate. This ensures end users receive the message in their preferred language right away.

Messages from end users translate in the Zendesk UI. The system translates agent replies before delivery to the end user, but the translated text doesn’t appear in the agent interface. This design lets agents work in their original language while the end user receives a localized version of each message.

Only supported languages are translated for AI-generated first replies and for live translation. If either the end user’s language or the agent’s language isn’t supported, those messages stay unchanged.

The ticket doesn’t auto-translate agent messages in the agent interface to the end user’s default language. For example, if an agent writes in Italian to a customer, the system can translate the response to English for delivery. If the ticket is assigned to an English-speaking agent, the agent sees the previous agent replies in Italian. Press Translate to translate only the customer’s replies in the interface.

You can find third-party apps in the Marketplace that offer similar translation for other channels for agents and end users. For example, Unbabel or Language.io.

For more information, see: Understanding and activating live conversation translation.