Chatbots for Multilingual Conversations

Chatbots emulate human dialogue to provide a more intuitive user interface to applications or simply provide entertainment. Chatbots rely on technology to function and new and emerging technologies such as NLP (Natural Language Processing) and AI (Artificial Intelligence) can be used to increase the ability of chatbots to emulate a more natural and free flowing conversation. As more and more mobile device users transition to increased use of texts and messaging chatbots can be used to provide consumers with multilingual support and services. While some chatbots have been developed in other languages, currently most converse only in English, and only a few can communicate in multiple languages. If configured correctly multilingual chatbots have the potential of providing a digital communication option that transcends language barriers. For our research we focused on the use of a chatbot that links the English-speaking Tutor Mike system with Google Translate, thus providing conversational capability in 103 languages, which is more than any other artificial multilingual agent is currently capable of. Two humans communicated with the system using German, Spanish, and Korean, and a group of undergraduate students reviewed the English translations of the chatbot’s replies. Results show that the responses from German and Spanish were cogent and natural, but those from Korean were less understandable. As a caveat, Asian languages lack much of the linguistic nuances of European languages. For example, there may be no plural form or gender in the Asian language. Unlike German where nouns and adjectives constantly change endings depending on what they are doing in a sentence and, unlike Spanish, which have numerous verb conjugations, Asian languages require no such changes. This might impact the translation ability and quality of a multilingual chatbot. Additional research and enhancements can improve chatbots used for European to Asian language translations and vice-versa. Regardless, our research shows promising results in the future use of multilingual chatbots to allow communication across the globe with business potential in the use of such chatbots to provide customer service and online live interaction with customers across the world.