Skip to content

17.multilingual-conversations

Directory actions

More options

Directory actions

More options

Latest commit

 

History

History
 
 

17.multilingual-conversations

README.md

Multilingual Bot Sample

Bot Framework v4 multilingual bot sample

This bot has been created using Microsoft Bot Framework, it shows how to translate incoming and outgoing text using a custom middleware and the Microsoft Translator Text API.

Prerequisites

  • Node.js version 8.5 or higher

    # determine node version
node --version

  • Microsoft Translator Text API key

    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));

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
  • Install modules 
    npm install
  • Start the bot 
    npm start

Testing the bot using Bot Framework Emulator v4

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 version 4.2.0 or greater from here

Connect to the bot using Bot Framework Emulator v4

  • Launch Bot Framework Emulator
  • File -> Open Bot Configuration
  • 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

Prerequisites

Provision a Bot with Azure Bot Service

After creating the bot and testing it locally, you can deploy it to Azure to make it accessible from anywhere. To deploy your bot to Azure:

# login to Azure
az login
# set you Azure subscription
az account set --subscription "<azure-subscription>"
# provision Azure Bot Services resources to host your bot
msbot clone services --name "<your_bot_name>" --code-dir "." --location westus --sdkLanguage "Node" --folder deploymentScripts/msbotClone --verbose

Add translationKey to Application Settings

If you used the .env file to store your translationKey then you'll need to add this key and its value to the Application Settings for your deployed bot.

  • Log into the Azure portal
  • In the left nav, click on Bot Services
  • Click the <your_bot_name> Name to display the bot's Web App Settings
  • Click the Application Settings
  • Scroll to the Application settings section
  • Click + Add new setting
  • Add the key translationKey with a value of the Translator Text API Authentication key created from the steps above

Publishing Changes to Azure Bot Service

As you make changes to your bot running locally, and want to deploy those change to Azure Bot Service, you can publish those change using either publish.cmd if you are on Windows or ./publish if you are on a non-Windows platform. The following is an example of publishing

# run the publish helper (non-Windows) to update Azure Bot Service.  Use publish.cmd if running on Windows
./publish

Getting Additional Help Deploying to Azure

To learn more about deploying a bot to Azure, see Deploy your bot to Azure for a complete list of deployment instructions.

Further reading