It is very common to implement a conversational assistant in multiple languages. Let’s say you have built a customer service assistant. One of the requirements may be to support additional languages, such as Arabic and Spanish, to accommodate your customer base. Often, I am asked how best to manage multiple skills, formerly called workspaces, in IBM Watson Assistant to achieve this goal. Though complete automation is a non-trivial task, there are ways this can be managed with some automation. Below are some suggestions to get you on your path.

用多种语言实现会话助手是很常见的。 假设您已经建立了一个客户服务助理。 要求之一可能是支持其他语言，例如阿拉伯语和西班牙语，以适应您的客户群。 通常，我被问到如何最好地管理IBM Watson Assistant中的多种技能(以前称为工作区)以实现此目标。 尽管完全自动化是一项艰巨的任务，但是有一些方法可以通过某种自动化来管理。 以下是一些建议，可以助您一臂之力。

Let’s assume you have built your Watson Assistant in the English language. Now you need to build the Arabic version of the assistant. The first thing you should do is review the list of supported languages and features for your languages of interest. Each language does not support all features. For example, contextual entities are supported in English but not in Arabic. So just be mindful of those feature differences and account for them accordingly.

假设您已经用英语构建了Watson Assistant。 现在，您需要构建助手的阿拉伯版本。 您应该做的第一件事是查看感兴趣的语言支持的语言和功能的列表。 每种语言都不支持所有功能。 例如，上下文实体受英语支持，但不受阿拉伯语支持。 因此，请注意这些功能差异并相应地解决它们。

Next, you need to export your English skill from Watson Assistant. Before you do that, you want to make sure that the “Irrelevance detection” option is set to “Keep existing”. There is an enhanced capability to detect irrelevant topics, however as of this post, it is only available in English. If this is not set properly, the import of your skill will throw an error later.

接下来，您需要从Watson Assistant中导出您的英语技能。 在执行此操作之前，您要确保将“不相关检测”选项设置为“保持存在”。 增强了检测不相关主题的功能，但是，截至本文发布之时，它仅提供英语版本。 如果设置不正确，那么您的技能导入将在以后引发错误。

Now you are ready to export your English skill. Go to your “Skills” section in Watson Assistant, click on the ellipsis and then select “Export”. This will export your skill to a json file.

现在，您可以准备导出您的英语技能了。 转到Watson Assistant中的“技能”部分，单击省略号，然后选择“导出”。 这会将您的技能导出到json文件。

Open that json file in your text editor of choice and look for the language parameter. Change the ‘en’ to the target language of your choice. In this case, ‘ar’ for the Arabic language. You can find the appropriate value for your language here.

在您选择的文本编辑器中打开该json文件，然后查找language参数。 将“ en”更改为您选择的目标语言。 在这种情况下，阿拉伯语为“ ar”。 您可以在此处找到适合您的语言的值。

Once you have made the change, save the json file. Go back to Watson Assistant, create a new dialog skill and select the “Import skill” option. Then point to your newly modified json file, which contains the Arabic language value. Watson Assistant will build your new skill with the core language set to Arabic.

进行更改后，保存json文件。 返回Watson Assistant，创建新的对话技能，然后选择“导入技能”选项。 然后指向您新修改的json文件，其中包含阿拉伯语的值。 Watson Assistant将使用设置为阿拉伯语的核心语言来培养您的新技能。

To be clear, what you now have, is a copy of your English skill. It has all the dialog, intents, etc, still in the English language. But it is inside the context of an Arabic skill according to Watson Assistant. Note that there are additional bidirectional language preferences that you can optionally configure in an Arabic skill.

明确地说，您现在拥有的是您的英语技能的副本。 它具有所有对话框，意图等，仍为英语。 但根据Watson Assistant的说法，这是在阿拉伯语技能的背景下。 请注意，您还可以选择使用阿拉伯语技能配置其他双向语言首选项 。

Translate Content

翻译内容

The next step is to translate all your textual content from English to Arabic. There are two major steps in this process. The first step is getting the content translated. The second step is updating the skill with the translated content. There are several ways you can go about doing this.

下一步是将所有文本内容从英语翻译成阿拉伯语。 此过程有两个主要步骤。 第一步是翻译内容。 第二步是使用翻译后的内容更新技能。 您可以通过多种方式执行此操作。

One automation option is to use IBM Watson Language Translator to translate all your text from English to Arabic. You would need to write a script to extract the relevant text from your English skill’s json file to process those through the Watson Language Translator service. Those results need to be stored somewhere such as a data store or a temporary location — I’ll discuss this in the next section. Remember, this is a conversational use case. English and Arabic are wildly different languages in their form and origin (I speak Arabic, so I know firsthand :) . I would highly suggest having a native Arabic resource (who also speaks, reads and writes English fluently) review all the translations to ensure that the context is optimal for conversation.

一种自动化的选择是使用IBM Watson Language Translator将您所有的文本从英语翻译成阿拉伯语。 您将需要编写脚本以从英语技能的json文件中提取相关文本，以通过Watson Language Translator服务处理这些文本。 这些结果需要存储在某个地方，例如数据存储或临时位置，我将在下一部分中讨论。 请记住，这是一个对话用例。 英文和阿拉伯文在形式和来源上是完全不同的语言(我说阿拉伯语，所以我是第一手知道的：)。 我强烈建议您使用阿拉伯文的母语(他也会说流利的英语和英语)阅读所有翻译，以确保上下文适合进行对话。

Another option would be to have a native Arabic resource manually translate the content. You would need to create a data store, such as a spreadsheet, that contains all your dialog structure, intents, etc. The resource can use this to review the content and add their translations. Using an external data store will make it much easier to manage your skills for purposes like this.

另一种选择是让本地阿拉伯语资源手动翻译内容。 您将需要创建一个数据存储区(例如电子表格)，其中包含您所有的对话框结构，意图等。资源可以使用它来查看内容并添加其翻译。 使用外部数据存储将可以更轻松地管理您的技能，以实现此类目的。

Updating Content

更新内容

Now that you have the content translated, the ideal scenario would be to trigger a process to have all the content automatically updated in your skill, in Watson Assistant. This is certainly achievable but requires some work to create a program that will take the new Arabic translations from your data store or temporary storage and update the English equivalents. You can programmatically apply the updates to your skill json file. You need to have an organized and detailed data store that contains a key reference (eg dialog node ID) to ensure this is done smoothly.

现在，您已经翻译了内容，理想的情况是在Watson Assistant中触发一个过程，以使用您的技能自动更新所有内容。 这当然是可以实现的，但需要做一些工作来创建一个程序，该程序将从您的数据存储区或临时存储区中获取新的阿拉伯语翻译，并更新英语等效语言。 您可以以编程方式将更新应用于技能json文件。 您需要有一个组织化且详细的数据存储，其中包含一个关键参考(例如，对话框节点ID)，以确保顺利进行。

Another option is to do this manually in Watson Assistant. It would not be the most exciting task, yet it will get the job done. The resource who updates the content in Watson Assistant will still require the data store reference to know how to appropriately update the content.

另一个选择是在Watson Assistant中手动执行此操作。 这不是最激动人心的任务，但可以完成工作。 在Watson Assistant中更新内容的资源仍将需要数据存储引用来知道如何适当地更新内容。

The option that you decide on will depend on several factors such as your sizing of effort, resources available, etc.

您决定选择的选项取决于几个因素，例如您的工作量大小，可用资源等。

Managing Content Going Forward

管理内容前进

Once you define your process to translate your skills, you can use that approach to manage any updates going forward. There are other possible options out there to accomplish these tasks but these tips will help get you started on your path.

一旦定义了翻译技能的过程，就可以使用该方法来管理将来的所有更新。 还有其他可能的选项可以完成这些任务，但是这些提示将帮助您入门。

Marc is the CTO for IBM Watson AI Strategic Partnerships. When not leading the technology strategy and vision for IBM Partnerships, Marc enjoys DJing, playing video games and wrestling.

马克是 IBM Watson AI战略合作伙伴关系的首席技术官。 当不领导IBM合作伙伴关系的技术战略和愿景时，Marc喜欢DJ，玩视频游戏和摔跤。