Introducing Discussion/Inbox AI Translations

[TamasBalogh]

Do you teach multicultural classes or students whose parents are non-native speakers? Discussion and Inbox AI Translation features can help overcome language barriers in student-to-student and teacher-to-parent communication.

Discussion Translation allows all students to translate Discussion threads, including the topic and replies. This helps students better understand the conversation, leading to greater involvement and engagement.

Inbox Translation enables you to translate composed Inbox messages before sending them, which is particularly useful when communicating with non-native speaking parents.

At launch, 10 languages are available to translate, and we are going to add more languages over time. The languages available are:

• Catalan
• Chinese (Simplified)
• Dutch
• English
• French
• German
• Portugese (Brazil)
• Russian
• Spanish
• Swedish

How Discussion Translation Works

When this feature option is enabled, users will have the ability to translate discussion replies by clicking on the Open Translate button. After that, they need to select a language from the available language list and click Translate.

After a successful translation, the discussion topic and all replies will be translated, showing both the original and translated text. 

How Inbox Translation Works

When this feature option is enabled, users composing a new Inbox message will see an "Include translated version of this message" option. Enabling this option will display a language selector next to the Translate button, allowing users to choose the desired language and specify whether the translated version should appear first or second. After a successful translation, the sent message will include the translated version.

How You Can Help

Enable the Discussion Translation and/or Inbox Translation features and give us feedback! We would be interested in your use cases and your impression of the quality of translation! Join the discussion and let us know!

[GS_538]

Hello, Tamas! Congratulations on getting the AI translations into our courses!  Of course, I jumped on the opportunity to enable it for the account. 

I could not find AI Translation as a feature in neither account settings or course settings. Please help to locate it. 

And yes, I am the superadmin for the account. No one above is managing it. 

Thank you! 

[TamasBalogh]

@GS_538 Thank you, I'm glad you are interested in the feature.

Both Inbox and Discussion translation features are in beta as Feature Preview currently. They are not yet available in production environments. 

[GS_538]

Oh, I was under impression that it is in production and ready to be incorporated in our process. I am happy to test in beta, but what is your timeline for offering it in production?

[TamasBalogh]

@GS_538 it will go to production with the September production release.

[GS_538]

Thank you, Tamas! Looking forward to it! 

[cms_hickss]

The Setting says:

Enable translation software when composing messages. Translate inbound messages automatically into user's preferred language.

But should it not actually say "Translate OUTBOUND messages automatically to the language chosen by sender."

Because right now, the Sender has to select the language that the message will be translated into, meaning the Sender must know the "preferred" language of the Recipient. It does not appear to automatically know the language of the recipient to translate an inbound message.

[kailey]

@TamasBalogh I hope you can help clarify a couple things. I would send these to Support, but they say they're unable to answer questions about expected behavior for BETA features still under active development. 

1. The release notes has the Discussions/Announcements translate button text as "Open Translate" next to the Expand Threads button. However, in our Beta instance, it says "Enable Translation" and appears in the filters row. Which is expected/accurate?
   
   
   
2. Is there a word or character limit for the discussions/announcements translation feature? I consistently get a "text too long" error with a 411-word announcement, but a 589-word announcement consistently translates fine, so the error I get does not seem accurate. 
   

Feedback for Inbox translations: 
On the Feature Options page the caret dropdown for Inbox Translations has:

To me, this suggests two functions - the second being that any Canvas user can set their preferred language in Canvas and ANY AND ALL Inbox messages received will be automatically translated to their preferred language. After unsuccessfully getting this to work and confirming with Instructure, my assumption was incorrect. The wording could be tweaked for clarity that the feature only has one function - allow senders the option to translate outbound messages. 

Thanks!

(I'll also add this to the Release notes Q&A with additional questions/feedback for Discussion Insights).