Languages
Switching languages mid-sentence
How the agent follows customers who mix Arabic and English in the same sentence, and how it composes its reply.
On this page
In the Gulf, a sentence often starts in Arabic, switches to English for the technical part, and finishes in dialect. This is called code-switching, and it is how many of your customers speak every day. The agent follows it without being told which language is in use: it understands the sentence as one request, picks out the details whichever language they arrive in, and carries on the conversation. It does this on calls and in written messages.
What mixed speech sounds like in your industry
Customers tend to switch into English for the terms of the trade: a service charge, a check-in, an excess. The rest of the sentence stays in their own dialect.
| Industry | What the customer says | In English | What the agent picks out |
|---|---|---|---|
| Property | "أبغى أعرف كم الـ service charge للوحدة، and is it paid quarterly?" | I want to know the service charge for the unit, and is it paid quarterly? | Topic: service charge. Unit: from the customer record. Question: how often it is paid |
| Travel and hospitality | "ممكن أغيّر الـ check-in ليوم الجمعة؟ The booking is under my husband's name." | Can I change the check-in to Friday? The booking is under my husband's name. | Request: change of arrival date. New date: Friday. Booking held by another guest |
| Insurance | "صار لي accident أمس والسيارة ما تمشي، what's my excess?" | I had an accident yesterday and the car won't drive. What's my excess? | New motor claim. Date: yesterday. Vehicle not driveable. Question: the policy excess |
Arabic in this table must be checked by a native speaker before publication.
How the agent follows a mixed sentence
There is no menu and no "press 1 for English". The customer speaks as they normally would, and the agent works out what they mean from the whole sentence rather than from one half of it.
Details are picked out whichever language they come in. A date said in Arabic, a booking reference read out in English and a product term dropped into an Arabic sentence all end up in the same structured request. The industry model (what the agent knows about the things your business runs on, and the rules attached to each) helps here. "Excess" and "service charge" are things the agent already understands in your industry, whether the customer says them in English or in Arabic.
How the agent composes its reply
The agent replies in the language the customer is mainly using. Where the customer used an English term for something, such as "check-in" or "excess", the agent can use the same term, so the reply sounds like the conversation it is answering rather than a translation of it.
Figures such as amounts, dates and reference numbers are inserted directly from the record in your system, not retyped by the model, whichever language surrounds them. How formal the reply is follows the tone agreed for your deployment. If the customer moves fully into English, or asks for English, the agent follows. See Language detection and preference.
The technical detail
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Does the customer need to choose a language? | No. The agent processes mixed-language speech without being told which language is in use |
| What does speech recognition do with a mixed sentence? | Speech recognition (the technology that turns spoken words into text) handles Arabic and English in the same stream, so the transcript keeps both languages as they were spoken |
| Is the customer's speech translated before it is understood? | No. The mixed transcript goes to the language model (the AI component that interprets the conversation and composes the reply) as it was spoken, and is understood as a whole |
| Where does this run? | Speech recognition always runs in your chosen region. The language model runs there too, unless you explicitly choose a provider outside it. See Models and providers |
| Does it work in written messages? | Yes. Customers mix languages on WhatsApp, SMS, email and web chat too, and the agent reads the message as a whole in the same way |
| How is it tested? | Your industry test set (the conversations the agent is tested against before every release) includes mixed-language conversations, and the voice chosen for your deployment is tested on mixed replies before go-live |
In practice
A Gulf airline, Rimal Air, uses the agent on its reservations line during delays and cancellations.
- At 9:40pm, Hessa calls. "الـ flight حقي تأخر، وأبغى أعرف إذا في connection ثانية الليلة." (My flight is delayed, and I want to know if there's another connection tonight.)
- The agent identifies her booking from her phone number, confirms her identity, and understands that she needs a new connection tonight.
- It checks the rebooking options her fare permits and finds two later connections. It explains both in Gulf Arabic, keeping "connection" and the flight numbers as she would expect to hear them.
- Hessa chooses the second. The agent rebooks her and sends the new itinerary on WhatsApp, with flight numbers and times taken from the reservation system.
- The customer record shows the transcript in Arabic and English, as she spoke, alongside the rebooking and the fare rule that permitted it.
What your team controls
- Which variety of Arabic the agent replies in on each channel.
- Which terms the agent keeps in English, such as your product and project names.
- How formal the agent's replies are.
- The mixed-language test conversations your team runs before go-live.
Related
- Supported languages and Arabic dialectsLanguages
- Language detection and preferenceLanguages
- How an agent worksAgents
- Models and providersAgents
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