Chatbots are currently hyped as a new user experience paradigm, especially in customer service scenarios. They are popping up on many company websites or in social media channels but often they support only one language. Multilingual chatbots are still rare. The reasons for this monolingual approach are manifold. While chatbots are technically a piece of software, they leave the realm of traditional apps or websites, as they go beyond the linguistic level and are used in a special context - a human conversation. Human conversations follow patterns that are culture-specific to a large degree. So, localizing chatbots involves more than translating the actual dialogue. Since chatbots act as a conversation partner, we need to consider human, cultural, and psychological aspects as well as social conventions and rules. Also, the personality of the chatbot, in particular its design, gender, name, and voice, is of great importance. In this session, I will talk about several major challenges and also provide some tips and recommendations on how to make a multilingual chatbot a success.
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