Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
 
 

17.multilingual-conversations

README.MD

Multilingual Bot Sample

This sample shows how to translate incoming and outgoing text using a custom middleware and the Microsoft Translator Text API. This bot example uses restify and dotenv.

To try this sample

  • Clone the repository 
    git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/botbuilder-samples.git
  • In a terminal, navigate to samples/javascript_nodejs/17.multilingual-conversations 
    cd samples/javascript_nodejs/17.multilingual-conversations
  • [Optional] Update the .env file under samples/javascript_nodejs/17.multilingual-conversations with your botFileSecret For Azure Bot Service bots, you can find the botFileSecret under application settings.
  • Install modules and start the bot 
    npm i & npm start
    Alternatively you can also use nodemon via 
    npm i & npm run watch

Microsoft Translator Text API

To consume the Microsoft Translator Text API, first obtain a key following the instructions in the Microsoft Translator Text API documentation. Paste the key in the translationKey setting in the .env file, or use your preferred configuration and update the following line in index.js with your translation key:

adapter.use(new TranslatorMiddleware(languagePreferenceProperty, process.env.translatorKey));

Testing the bot using Bot Framework Emulator

Microsoft Bot Framework Emulator is a desktop application that allows bot developers to test and debug their bots on localhost or running remotely through a tunnel.

Install the Bot Framework Emulator from here

Connect to bot using Bot Framework Emulator V4

  • Launch Bot Framework Emulator
  • File -> Open Bot Configuration and navigate to samples/javascript_nodejs/17.multilingual-conversations folder
  • Select multilingual-conversations.bot file

Creating a custom middleware

Translation Middleware: We create a translation middleware than can translate text from bot to user and from user to bot, allowing the creation of multilingual bots. Users can specify their language preference, which is stored in the user state. The translation middleware translates to and from the user's preferred language.

Microsoft Translator Text API

The Microsoft Translator Text API, Microsoft Translator Text API is a cloud-based machine translation service. With this API you can translate text in near real-time from any app or service through a simple REST API call. The API uses the most modern neural machine translation technology, as well as offering statistical machine translation technology.

Deploy this bot to Azure

You can use the MSBot Bot Builder CLI tool to clone and configure any services this sample depends on.

To install all Bot Builder tools -

Ensure you have Node.js version 8.5 or higher

npm i -g msbot chatdown ludown qnamaker luis-apis botdispatch luisgen

To clone this bot, run

msbot clone services -f deploymentScripts/msbotClone -n <BOT-NAME> -l <Azure-location> --subscriptionId <Azure-subscription-id>

Further reading